Subject: MIRNEWS.348
From: "C.M. van den Berg" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 15:07:55 +0100

MIRNEWS.348                 2 MARCH 1997

Soyuz-TM24 made happy landing:

On 2.03.1997 at 0644UTC the returncapsule of the S-TM24 made a
safe landing in Kazakhstan not far from Arkalyk (47degr49min
North; 69degr24min East). At abt 4 mins later the first heli
copter of the search- and rescue team reached that position.
The returnoperation and landing took place without problems.
During the returnoperation S-TM24 communicated via the Eastern
trackingstations in Russia and probably Altair-2 over 96 dgs
East. Obviously Altair-1 was (or: is?) not operational.  

Last week of MIR'97 and Main Expedition MIR 22:

The fire in the night from 22 to 23.02 put its stamp on this
last week due to the pollution of the MIR's atmosphere during
the first days and the extra attention the crew had to give to
the damaged oxygen-generator and cabels. For a long time there
was the smell caused by the fire. One of the cosmonauts spoke
about  the smell of 'roasted turkey'. Some crewmembers suffe
red from some irritation of the bronchia, a dry throat and
sleeping problems. Nobody was hurt with the exception of
Korzun who had a very small burn on his hand. Ewald had alrea
dy executed the majority of the MIR'97 experiments and the
events did not significantly influence that program. German
projectmanagers were satisfied about the successful results
and conclusion of the mission. During this week there has been
a lot of radiotraffic on 2 frequencies simultanuously: the
Russians used 143.625 mc and Ewald and Linenger 130.165 mc.  
For some planned TV sessions, i.e. for the the RTL children
sprogramme Captain Bluebear and about a concours for drawings
by children with the wife of the German President Herzog they
did not use the geostationary satellites but direct TV trans
ceivers on lower frequencies. For phone during these sessions
Ewald used the UKW-2 130.165 mc.  

Siriusses: The new crew, Tsibliyev and Lazutkin, the 23d M.E.
to MIR, and Jerry Linenger will have to do a lot of work in
the near future. In fact there are still a lot of experiments
in the framework of MIR'97 to be done: this had been planned
and this work got the designation MIR'97E, the letter 'E'
standing for 'Extension'. 

Progress-M33: This old freighter is still flying autonomously
until her 2d docking at MIR. That will take place on 4.03.97.
Tsibliyev got orders to control the approach and docking
manually with the remote-control system TORU. There has also
been an instruction to leave Pr-M33's hatch closed after
docking. Kaleri asked TsUP to consider the possibility to open
the hatch and to use the still available room in the spherical
part of Pr-M33 to stow stuff no longer needed: especially the
considerable amount of human waste. During the long period
with a crew of 6 the quantity of this increased enormously.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202