Subject: MIRNEWS.378
From: "C.M. van den Berg" <[email-masked]>
To: "Dan Gauthier" <[email-masked]>, "dirk rensink" <[email-masked]>, "Dave Larsen" <[email-masked]>, "Jonathan McDowell" <[email-masked]>, "JL Green" <[email-masked]>, "Friends Partners Space" <[email-masked]>, "Igor Lissov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 21:48:12 +0200

MIRNEWS.378                       17 AUGUST 1997

Progress-M35: The redocking of this 'old' supplyship at the MIR complex did
not take place on 17.08. During the first 3 passes of both objects it was
obvious that Pr-M35 was continuing her autonomous flight. During the second
pass the deputy head of mission control, Viktor Blagov, told the crew about
 changes in the workschedule for the next 2 days.  The IVA would  remain on
schedule for 20.08.97.  

Reason postponement:  The data for the approach of Pr-M35 today transmitted
by TsUP to the Pr-M35  turned out to be wrong and Pr-M35's OBC shut itself
off. At deadline for this report the docking of Pr-M35 at MIR was (still)
planned for 18.08 at 1257UTC. 

Soyuz-TM26: The redocking of this transportship from the aft to the forward
docking port took place on 15.08.97 between 13.29.20 and 14.13.04UTC. At
1327UTC, so  just before separation, radiotraffic from S-TM26 via Altair-2
could be heard.  The safety clamps of the dockingmechanism had been
loosened and the program was proceeding according to plan. At 13.29.20UTC
Solovyov reported the separation and the fact that S-TM26 was slowly moving
away from MIR.  S. steered S-TM26 in the manual mode to  be able to adjust
the attitude of the ship  in such a way  that Vinogradov and Foale could 
make good images of the 'damage areas'.  At 13.29.51UTC Altair-2
transmitted an image of the whole complex seen by  a camera of  the ship. 

At 13.35.59UTC S.  reported  the proceedings of the flight. He asked Foale
whether he already was doing his photo- and video work and asked him for
instructions to adjust the ship's attitude for the best images. 
Communications via Altair-2 ceased at 13.42.58UTC, but a few minutes later
S. could be heard via 121.750 mc (1401-1409UTC).  4 minutes later S.
accomplished  a perfect docking at the forward (P.Kh.O. - transition
section) port of the complex. 

Back on board MIR S. told TsUP that the images they had made were very good
 and certainly useful for analyses. In a conversation with Earth Foale told
that they intended to transmit these images to TsUP  on 18.08 and he was
sure that TV stations all over the world  would retransmit these. 
(The TV shots which already had been shown by TV stations came from short
direct links with Russian trackingstations.)

Elektron: Already on the day of the return of the relieved crew Vinogradov
succeeded in restoring the Elektron oxygen generator in Kvant-1. It was
very difficult to reach the spot where he had to clean Elektron.  A
white-brown jelly-like substance had stopped up a pipe inside Elektron and
had to be cleaned. After purging this pipe he was able to restart Elektron
and after 1 orbit Solovyov reported that Elektron was working normally. As
far as could be derived from radiotraffic Elektron still does thusfar. 

Chris Vandenberg, NL-9165/A-UK3202