Cosmonauts Anatoliy Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov have returned to the Mir space station after a spacewalk to fit a new solar panel.

These are excerpts from a report by Russia TV on 6th November

[Correspondent] One can say with a degree of certainty that today's spacewalk was quite successful despite the fact that the crew and experts had yet again to deal with an unusual situation.

Work in space during the five hours proceeded as planned. The cosmonauts transferred a spare solar battery from the docking section and secured it to the Kvant module.

A problem arose during the unfolding of the battery. Two attempts were made to unfold it automatically. The battery opened only at the third attempt.

[Vladimir Solovyev, Mir flight controller] One has the impression that as a result of prolonged storage in space in very low temperatures - it was minus 90 [C] there - it simply seized up mechanically.

The crew literally helped it a bit and then it started to unfold by itself.

[Correspondent]... Dealing with the pressure problem in the depressurised hatch section was left for the end of operation.

Solovyev and Vinogradov concluded today that the 2mm-thick white powder-like deposit on the seal of the hatch had caused the leaks in the hatch.

What is this deposit? Neither specialists nor the cosmonauts themselves have yet been able to establish whether it is a condensate or corrosion.

[Solovyev] They removed this deposit. In addition, we reinforced the hatch with additional clasps and increased the attraction of the hatch to the airlock unit.

[Correspondent] The first experiments showed that there were now no leaks in the hatch, but it is too early to draw the final conclusion.

Specialists will be able to convince themselves that the cargo section is completely sealed only in the next few days.

Source: Russia TV channel, Moscow, in Russian 1100 gmt 6 Nov 97

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage | ©