NASA MIR PROGRAM

Mir 23 / NASA 5 Status

Date: Wednesday, June 25, 1997

Mission Day: Mir 23 / NASA 5 MD 136/41

Mir 23 CDR Vasili Tsibliev

Mir 23 FE Alexander Lazutkin

NASA 5 FE Mike Foale

At approximately 5:18 a.m. EDT (1:18 p.m. Moscow time), the Mir 23 crew informed controllers at the Russian Mission Control Center-Korolev that the Progress Module had struck the station, and that the Space Station was losing pressure. Later reports from the crew indicated that during the redocking of the Progress capsule, the capsule hit a solar array and a nearby radiator on Spektr. The collision occurred shortly before the beginning of the communications pass. The collision caused the Spektr Module to begin losing pressure.

The crew closed the hatch to the leaking Spektr Module and reported shortly thereafter that the pressure was stabilizing in the rest of the station. At 5:28 a.m. EDT (1:28 p.m. Moscow time), the crew reported that the pressure in the now isolated Spektr Module had dropped to 480 mm mercury and was continuing to drop. At its lowest, the normal Mir station pressure of approximately 750 mm dropped to 675 mm before beginning to rise. At approximately 5:30 a.m. EDT the station was in free drift and the Progress capsule was 100 meters from the station and moving away.

Before the collision, the station Commander, Vasily Tsibliev, was bringing the Progress capsule in manually using the teleoperator (TORU) system in the Core Module. Vasily reported to the ground that the Progress had come in very fast and he couldn't stop it.

The Spektr Module contains several NASA science experiments, some stored items, and Astronaut Mike Foale's personal effects. The Spektr experiments include a centrifuge, radiation monitoring equipment, and Earth observation equipment. The ramifications of this potential loss are still being assessed.

During a later comm pass at 6:53 a.m. EDT, the crew reported that the station pressure had stabilized at 692 mm Hg and that the Progress had moved to 2600 meters away from the station. To conserve power, the crew were told to shut down the thermal control systems and the ventilation systems in the Kvant-2 and Kristall modules as well as shut down the urine processing system. The station was initially spinning at approximately 1 degree per sec., due to the collision, but the spin is now stopped.

Mir Operations Support Team - (MOST)

JSC Payload Operations Support Area - (POSA)