MIRNEWS.441    11 OCTOBER 1998

MIR-reporting:

During the last weeks the frequency in which my MIRNEWS-es appeared decreased a
little bit. Main causes of this reduction were the loss of the geostationary
communication satellite Altair-2 as an information source, and the fact that
MIR-passes merely took place during the night hours. So the VHF-passes, on
which I now can only depend did not give much information. Meanwhile MIR is
passing again during the evening and afternoon, and the amount of
communications has considerably increased.

Fortunately sufficient information can be derived from VHF communications and
so my work remains to be meaningful. In fact I did not have the Altair-
facilities before 1992 and after the installation of an own dish for those
communications in 1994 there have been long periods in which the satellite was
not available. After the drop out of Altair-1 in the beginning of 1997, due to
an attitude problem bringing that satellite in a sunpointing position, I had to
wait until that summer when the Altair-2 was replaced from 96 degrees East to
16 degrees West.

MIR-routine:

During the full period after my previous MIRNEWS (440) , TsUP and the crew
regularly discussed problems regarding the oxygen production for MIR's mini
atmosphere. Every day the cosmonauts were engaged in the functioning of the
Elektron oxygen generators. These systems did not fail, but it was clear that
the crew did not trust the automatic functioning of them, and took over
manually at every given moment.

The crew did not have problems with the BKV-3, the airconditioner. Recently
this system showed glitches when the cosmonauts switched it on.

On 3.10.1998 the attitude control was discussed. There was no failure, the
crew spoke about the SUD (system for control of movements). From the given
commands and the use of the indication Quaternion (a coefficient of 2 vectors)
could be derived that for a while the attitude was not under control by the
gyrodynes. Possibly a reset operation took place. Regularly the gyrodynes have
to be reset to the starting point.

On 5.10.1998 TsUP told the crew that there had been a session of the Contract
Commission. The session was a rather tumultuous one, because among other
things they discussed problems experienced by the previous expedition
(Musabayev and Budarin). The man at TsUP evaluated the results of that session
as 'favourable'. Somebody of that commission (possibly named Rodionov) had
ordered TsUP to pass on to the present MIR-crew that the 'leadership was highly
pleased with the work of the crew'. If Padalka and Avdeyev might have problems
they immediately could pass these to him. The man had also promised to follow
radio-communications as much as possible.

On 6.10.1998 Avdeyev disscussed with TsUP an audio measurement experiment. In
the beginning this was not so successful, this in contrary to the execution of
the same experiment in the past. Avdeyev just started the adjustment of
parameters and later discussions made it clear that the experiment was running
well. Padalka asked for an advice about the Holter experiment (an American
cardio-vascular experiment).

On 7.10.1998 the same audio experiment (possibly Intrazvuk) was accomplished.
That day the cosmonauts discussed the inventarisation of the French experiments
on board MIR.

On 8.10.1998 the cosmonauts showed a great interest in the protest
demonstrations which had taken place the day before. It was clear that they
agreed 100% the demands of the demonstrators. TsUP gave a short report about
the demonstrations, the numbers of the participants (more than our media told
us), the many red (communist) and blue (trade-union) flags and the fact that
even army chiefs were there. Padalka asked the man at TsUP if he had received
his salary. The man said that he had indeed received it.

On 9.10.1998 there was some confusion about a number of Telemetry connections.
The data of some life system channels did not reach TsUP and TsUP was not able
to give commands and data inquiries via the 'uplink'. The cosmonauts
repeatedly interchanged a number of connections and thus solved the problem.
TsUP supposed that the problem was caused during the expedition of Solovyov and
Vinogradov.

On 10.10.1998 TsUP spoke about the possibility that the CO2 amount in MIR's
atmosphere was too high. Telemetry gave a value of 5.9. Padalka said that
nothing was wrong and that they still felt excellent. Avdeyev checked the
Vozdukh CO-2 filter and did not find anomalies. Later the value had been
increased to 6.0 and the crew took counter measures by using ventilators to
blow the air through the whole complex. This did not help. To decrease the
CO2 amount the crew got orders to adjust the Vozdukh scrubber in the Base
Block.

Progress-M40:

In MIRNEWS.440 the possibility of the delay of the launch of
this freighter had been reported. Meanwhile there has been comfirmed that the
launch has been put back from 15.10 to 25.10.1998 due to funding probems. The
launch on 25.10, a Sunday, was chosen for ballistic reasons.

Chris van den Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.