A problem during an automated docking procedure between the Soyuz spacecraft and the space station forced the cosmonauts to manually dock the Soyuz craft that carried them from Earth to Mir.

During its final approach, the Soyuz fired its engines for the docking with Mir. This was the fifth engine firing since the spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Tuesday.

The latest maneuver brought the spacecraft within a few feet of the station. Then the Soyuz automatically switched to small thrusters to complete the docking.

The two cosmonauts, wearing pressurized space suits, monitored the docking process from the safety of the Soyuz reentry capsule. At a distance of 26 feet (8 meters) from Mir, the crew noticed a deviation from their visual target on Mir. The spacecraft was about 2 degrees off target, said Vera Medvedkova, a Russian space agency spokesperson.

Mission Control engineers in Korolev, Russia, directed the crew to interrupt the automatic rendezvous process and stabilize the spacecraft. The crew then took control of the Soyuz spacecraft and completed the docking manually.

Prior to docking, it took about an hour and a half for the crew to go through a pre-hatch opening check list. The real challenge, however, was to open the hatch.

"It is not an easy work to do this," said Viktor Afanasyev, a commander of the last mission to Mir. "Even when the hatch has not been opened just for a couple of months, you can feel how it gets stuck to the hatchway.

"By now, nobody has touched this hatch for eight months," he said. "Add to this the absence of a crew inside the station, which always helps to open the hatch. The guys in the spacecraft now have to work really hard to make their way inside the station."

Cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kalery eventually docked with the station at 2:31 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (06:31 GMT; 10:31 a.m. Moscow Time). Along with Afanasyev, several other cosmonauts and actor Vladimir Steklov, who was cut from the 28^th mission crew a week before lift-off, watched the events at the Mission Control Center in Moscow.

The crew's entrance to the station had been planned for 4:05 a.m. EDT (08:05 GMT; 12:05 p.m. Moscow Time). However, when Mission Control had its next opportunity to talk to the crew at 5:38 a.m. EDT (09:30 GMT; 1:38 p.m. Moscow Time), the crew reported that they were inside Mir and transmitted video the station to Earth.

They planned to go to sleep at 10:31 a.m. EDT (02:31 GMT; 6:31 p.m. Moscow Time) and spend their first "night" aboard the station.

In recent days, ground controllers successfully replenished the station's leaking atmosphere from a cache of air tanks on board the Progress spacecraft docked to the station, forestalling for the moment a problem that is causing air to leak from the station. Mir continues to lose pressure at a steady trickle, but it poses no immediate danger to the crew.

Mir was abandoned in August 1999 when Rosaviacosmos, the Russian space agency, could no longer afford to keep the outpost occupied. Since then, Western investors came forward to finance the latest mission.

What was originally planned to be a 45-day flight to prepare the station for deorbiting could turn into a 60-day or longer renovation flight if more privately raised funds reach RKK Energia, the company that operates Mir.

Rosaviacosmos representatives said that the crew could stay until August provided there are additional funds. They stressed that there will be no federal financial support for the station.