It's official: Mir is airtight and has been declared safe for future crew operations.
RKK Energia, the company operating the 14-year-old orbital outpost finalized its analysis on Tuesday and formally concluded that the air leak plaguing the station since last summer has been sealed.
Cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kalery boarded Mir on April 6 and
two weeks ago, the crew of the 28th expedition to the station is scheduled to return home on June 12 or June 16, while MirCorp is looking for funds for the next mission. MirCorp representatives indicated they were shooting for a November launch date for the next crew that may include a paid passenger to the station. According to RKK Energia officials, they would need around six months to train a potential passenger for the stay aboard Mir along with two experienced cosmonauts. As a result, MirCorp will have to commit the additional funds for the November mission as early as the end of June or beginning of July.
Recent orbital maneuvers will allow Mir to stay in a safe orbit until January or February of next year. If MirCorp's fund-raising efforts for the next mission are successful, a new Progress M cargo ship will carry food and water ahead of the next commercial crew. If the cash isn't raised, a final Progress M 1 spacecraft carrying an extra store of propellants will be sent to the station at the beginning of 2001 to perform the last deorbiting maneuvers, closing the final chapter on Mir's venerable history.
High-flying hopes
Andrew Eddy, senior vice president at MirCorp, said that the company is planning to provide from $100 to $200 million for the station's operations annually. According to Eddy, MirCorp hopes to keep Mir permanently occupied starting in November with a new crew launched from Baikonur on board Soyuz spacecraft every three months. Three or four Progress cargo ships a year would probably be required to support such an ambitious schedule.
Last week MirCorp also decided to go ahead with an exotic
), a policy organization of space activists, scientists and engineers. The experiment could be a precursor for a longer tether, which could be permanently used on board Mir to provide electricity for the energy-hungry station as well as save propellant.
Tumlinson, currently on a business trip in Europe, was not immediately available for comment. However, the officials at RKK Energia said that they received a request from MirCorp to start working on the preparations for the experiment.
The State Department reportedly cleared the hardware previously used in similar NASA experiments for export to Russia. RKK Energia officials said they would need between 10 and 12 months to develop, manufacture, test and deliver their share of the hardware for the experiment to the station.
Broken panel
Before a multi-mile (kilometer) tether floods Mir with energy, RKK Energia experts will be trying to understand what exactly caused an electrical fire in the electrical wiring on the Mir's exterior, which cut off the energy supply from the most efficient solar panel on the station. The cosmonauts found traces of the fire during a May 12 spacewalk.
The prevailing theory right now is that unusually long exposure to the sun brought a higher-than-expected flow of electricity through the cables, which eventually caused a short circuit.
Since around December of last year Mir was flying in an orbit which allowed continuous exposure of the panel to the sun. Around this time, the first anomalies in the panel's function were noticed. In March the solar array stopped supplying electricity to the station.
The so-called U.S.-Russian Cooperative Solar Array is equipped with highly efficient U.S.-built photovoltaic elements, which provided a power supply to the station. The similar Russian-built panel with less-effective elements continues function normally.
As long as Mir is operating in a low-power mode, with its most energy-hungry hardware such as furnaces and remote-sensing radar turned off, the station has enough electricity aboard. However, if the station is to renew its active duty in orbit, RKK Energia will have to find a way to rewire the disabled panel, Russian officials said.
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