Documents - Mir Mission Interviews

Mir-23 Mission Interviews

Following are links to interviews that took place during Mir-23

Jerry Linenger, NASA-4 Mir Resident - 3/21/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 4/11/97
Scott Gahring, Operations Lead, Mission Control, Russia - 4/18/97
Linda Godwin, STS-81 Astronaut - 4/25/97
John Charles, Phase 1 Mission Scientist -5/2/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 5/9/97
Mike Foale, NASA-5 Mir Resident -6/6/97
Mike Foale, NASA-5 Mir Resident - 6/13/97
Jerry Linenger, NASA-4 Mir Resident - 6/13/97
John Charles, Phase 1 Mission Scientist -6/20/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 6/27/97
Mike Foale, NASA-5 Mir Resident - 6/26/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 7/7/97
Dan Goldin Talks to Mike Foale - 7/11/97
Columbia and Mir Ham Radio Linkup - 7/11/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager -7/17/97
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager -7/18/97
Mark Severance, Operations Lead, MCC, Russia - 7/25/97
Mike Foale, NASA-5 Mir Resident - 8/1/97
Frank Culbertson, NASA Phase 1 Program Manager & Valery Ryumin, Phase 1 Manager, RSC Energia - 8/1/97

Mir-23 - Week of March 21, 1997

Fighting Fire Aboard Mir - Jerry Linenger describes the experience

During a recent interview, Jerry Linenger was asked about the fire onboard the Mir station last month. That brief fire in the Kvant-1 module began when a lithium perchlorate canister, used to supplement the station's oxygen supply for the six crewmembers onboard at the time, ruptured and exposed the metal holding device to extremely high temperatures. Linenger, sitting at the table in the core module (Base Block), described the experience.

"The fire took place just behind me in the Kvant module, not far from where I am sitting right now. Most of the other members of the crew were sitting at this table. Once the fire broke out the master alarm went off, smoke filled the station. It was readily apparent that there was indeed a fire. We immediately started fighting that fire.
"You had to react to the situation, you had to keep your head about you, so I guess it was just a matter of survival. Going through your mind were thoughts - 'We need to get that fire out,' because between us and one of the vehicles was the fire, so without getting that fire out there was no way to get to one of the Soyuz capsules.
"The smoke was the most surprising thing to me. I did not expect smoke to spread so quickly. It was a magnitude about 10 times faster than I would expect a fire to spread on a space station. The smoke was immediate, it was dense. Where I was sitting I could see the five fingers on my hand, I could see a shadowy figure of the person in front of me who I was trying to monitor to make sure he was doing okay, but I really could not make him out. Where he was standing he could not see his hands in front of his face. In the distant modules at the very end of the cones the smoke was still dense, so it was very surprising how fast and rapid the smoke spread throughout the complex.
"We immediately went to the oxygen-breathing device and without that I don't think you would have been able to breathe. When I first activated the first device, it took a little bit longer than I needed it to take to activate. There's a little chemical reaction that takes place inside the canister and I immediately had to take that mask off, grab another one and activate it, because in between the two times the atmosphere inside the station was unbreathable. I did not inhale anything and I don't think anyone else did, because the thickness of the smoke told you that you could not breathe, so everyone immediately went to the oxygen ventilators. They worked very good and they protected us.
"Afterwards, being a physician I was very concerned with crew health. We set up a station for any respiratory problems that might take place, we had all the emergency gear in place. I did exams on all the crewmembers immediately following the fire and then for 24 and 48 hours after that looked at oxygen saturation in the blood, checked the lungs, all the normal things you would do post-fire. From my assessment, I don't see where anyone had any serious inhalation damage and it was due to good action by the crew to get into the oxygen masks quickly."
The Mir crew is using three of those lithium perchlorate canisters per day to generate breathing oxygen while awaiting the arrival of parts to repair the primary oxygen generating system onboard. Linenger says he feels quite safe using those oxygen "candles," and that he has full confidence that the Russian flight control team will keep the 11-year-old station operating safely.

Read more about Jerry Linenger and NASA-4

Read Jerry Linenger's letters to his son

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Mir-23 - Week of April 11, 1997

Elektron System Update - Reported by NASA Shuttle-Mir Program Manager Frank Culbertson

Mir’s primary oxygen-generation system has been offline for a week. This week Mir’s crewmembers have been performing some daily activities to maintain the proper oxygen content of the station's environment while Russian flight controllers plan their repair strategy.

The Elektron system uses the process known as electrolysis to separate oxygen from onboard waste water and return it to the cabin atmosphere for the crew to breathe; the system shut itself down due to an excessive build-up of air within the system.
During an interview Friday, Shuttle-Mir Program Manager Frank Culbertson discussed the situation and how it is being remedied.
What is the current oxygen-generation status aboard the station?
Right now both Elektron systems are having problems. Elektron 2, which was their primary system, has a filter bypass problem. They have some parts going up on the Progress to try and remedy that situation. The one in Kvant-1, which was operating shortly after the one in Kvant-2 failed, is now continuing to have pump problems so they have shut that one down, as I understand. So again, they are waiting for parts from the Progress launch in early April to repair that one.
What is the current thinking on the ability to make repairs, as well as the timetable for doing that?
They feel that they have the capability to make repairs. Parts are somewhat of a problem; they are manufacturing some now. In addition, they have asked us to look at carrying some other hardware on STS-84 in May, in case either the repair doesn’t work or they need to do additional repairs. We are evaluating whether that’s a possibility this late prior to a shuttle launch.
In light of the Elektron system being down, please describe what Tsibliev, Lazutkin and Linenger are doing on a daily basis to maintain the proper oxygen levels onboard?
They still have the lithium-perchlorate system, the solid candles that generate oxygen, that they can operate. It takes about three a day for a crew of three to maintain proper oxygen levels and they are as we speak operating about three a day to keep the atmosphere satisfactory. They do that on a fairly routine basis now.
It was one of those canisters that sparked the fire on Mir last month. In light of that, are they taking any special precautions now in the use of those canisters?
Yes, they are. They have changed their procedures for activating the candles as well as monitoring them during use. They have also modified their firefighting procedures in case another one should occur, so they have looked at it very carefully. They have someone standing by with a fire extinguisher while using it, though the people I have talked to [in Russia] really don’t feel there is much probability of another fire. They have done some testing and analysis on the ground and are fairly confident that the ones they are using onboard the Mir now are safe.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of April 18, 1997

Elektron System Update - Reported by Scott Gahring, NASA Operations Lead at Mission Control in Korolev

Last week the Mir-23 crew bypassed a clogged filter on the Elektron oxygen generating system in the Kvant-2 module, and that system has now been operating continuously since last Saturday evening. Scott Gahring, the NASA Operations Lead at Mission Control in Korolev, outside Moscow gives us the latest on the status of Mir systems.

How well is the Elektron oxygen generation system working now? What other sources of oxygen the crew is using or could they use to ensure their oxygen supply?
The Elektron system’s up and working. It’s been working pretty well since last Saturday. It’s not producing oxygen at a rate sufficient for all three crew members so separate venting is necessary from gaseous oxygen to the Progress. We have 55 days worth of gaseous oxygen in the Progress in the event of an Elektron problem and we also have over 200 candles available if that becomes required.
The Vosdukh, the primary carbon dioxide removal system on the Mir, was restarted last week after the crewmembers removed a leaky heat exchanger from a cooling loop in the Kvant-1 module. What’s the status of that system, and with the levels of moisture and carbon dioxide inside the station?
Vosdukh’s continuing to operate well. The carbon dioxide levels are right where we’d like to see them. It’s not operating in optimum mode because of the coolant loop failures in the Kvant, but it’s still working fairly well. The carbon dioxide levels like I said are right where we like to see them. The humidity has been going down because some of that gets vented overboard with the carbon dioxide, but the levels seem to have stabilized and we’re not worried about that any more.
Over the past week Tsibliev, Lazutkin and Linenger have been looking for leaks in cooling loops in other station modules. Bring us up to date on the progress of that work, and talk about the procedures they’re using to search for those leaks.
It’s a pretty systematic approach. They configure valves and search each system segment by segmnt, pressurizing the segment and checking for pressure deltas. They hav en't had a lot of luck finding the loop in the Lunakhod system which is in Kvant-1 and is used for cooling the Vosdukh, but since Vosdukh is operating well for now they’ve decided to move ahead and look at leaks in the core module. They’re using that same systematic approach there, and as of today they may have found at least one leak in the core module but we’re kind of standing by. It’s a fairly recent development.
With all of that in mind, what’s the assessment of the Operations team there in Korolev as to the health of the Mir Space Station?
Everything looks good. The systems are gradually being restored to a more acceptable performance levels. It looks like we’ve gone through the darkest part and we’re headed toward the light. The systems look pretty good for the EVA, which was one of our concerns, and everyone in Houston and back here will be reviewing the system status over the next couple of days.
While continuing with repairs, some of the crew’s time is being spent preparing for the spacewalk by Tsibliev and Linenger scheduled for April 28. What new priorities and activities do the NASA teams in Korolev have in anticipation of that spacewalk?
The crew’s going to start updating their flight data file in preparation for the suit check-out set to begin next week so we’ll be following that here and back in Houston. We’re also getting ready to work on the procedures and some reminders for Jerry on the Optical Properties Monitor he’ll be carrying outside. We’re also getting ready for some of the upcoming events, the readiness reviews and some simulations for the EVA.

Read Scott Gahring's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of April 25, 1997

Mir EVA - Reported by Linda Godwin, Astronaut on STS-81

Linda Godwin is the Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office at the Johnson Space Center. In March 1996 she and Rich Clifford conducted a spacewalk from the shuttle Atlantis to install experiment packages on the docking module similar to those Tsibliev and Linenger will be dealing with next week. The following is a transcript of an interview with her on Friday, April 25, 1997.

Tsibliev and Linenger are scheduled to walk in space for more than five hours next Tuesday. Describe the jobs they’ll be working on, and talk about how complex those tasks are?
“Well, I’m sure Jerry’s going to be pretty excited going out to do this EVA and if I can draw some parallels, I suppose he’s going to be pretty amazed by the size of the structure he’s out there crawling around on. He’s going to get to the docking module a bit differently than we did, of course. We were just translating hand over hand and he’s going to get a ride on the crane over there, but the handholds and attach points and things are going to be very similar to what we saw when we were deploying the Mir Environmental Effects Payload on Mir that Rich and I did last year. We were using the other side of the docking module, of course. When we were putting our experiment packages on the module, the undeployed solar array panels were at that point on the other side and it’s at one of those attach points that Jerry will be helping to attach the Optical Properties Monitor. So he’ll be on the other side, away from the MEEPs and hopefully well away from their sensitive plates.”
The task of deploying the Optical Properties Monitor to the docking module is reminiscent of the job you and Rich Clifford did in deploying the Mir Environmental Effects Payload to the docking module during your six-hour spacewalk in March of last year. Is the docking module a particularly difficult area in which to work? Is there anything special they should be on the lookout for while they do this job?
“I didn’t think it was a particularly difficult area. The handholds, the reaches that we had were all very comfortable to make. Again, we didn’t move around on the side where they’ll be because of the solar array panels that were there at the time, but I don’t believe that they’ll have any trouble, and the only thing they need to watch out for are the experiment packages that are already there, and again will be very sensitive to touch and should be avoided, but since they’ll be working on the opposite face it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Linenger’s spacewalk will be the first ever for an American wearing a Russian spacesuit. Later this year cosmonaut Vladimir Titov will join his STS-86 crewmate Scott Parazynkski in a spacewalk from Endeavour wearing American spacesuits. Why is it important that the two space agencies have their spacewalkers learn to work in the other guy’s suit?
“It is important. When we get our International Space Station on orbit, operational, and even before that, of course, we’ll be doing the spacewalks. It’s a shared resource. We’re going to have both types of suits up there, both nationalities--many nationalities--and we may not always get to do things exactly as planned, we need to have capability to use the others’ hardware. We’ll learn from each side because each of us has developed a successful EVA program and the suits are different, so Jerry’ll be able to come back and tell us what’s different about working in the Orlan suit. I understand they have a new version of that suit to use for the first time on this EVA, so we’ll see how the reach is, the bending of the arms, the higher pressure, the lack of a pre-breathe, and it’s going to be a different way of getting to go outside than we’ve used on the shuttle, so I we’ll be able to learn from that experience that Jerry will have following his EVA.”
During your spacewalk last year you were able to take a close-up look at the Mir. Give us a feeling of what goes through your mind as you look up at that station, with all of its modules and solar arrays spread out in front of you.
“I felt like, and I felt this way even as we were coming up to dock with it by the way, but even more when I was outside, that it was a glimpse of what is our near-term future here of our own space station on orbit, or international station. It’s something that we’ve worked toward for a long time, and it was just finally getting an impression of what something like that in space will look like close up, and you can’t get much more close up than when you’re outside doing a spacewalk. It’s more complex than just looking at the payload bay of the shuttle and thinking how you’re going to move from point A to point B. Moving around on the station and on Mir is going to be much more of a challenge.

Mir-23 - Week of May 2, 1997

Interview with Dr. John Charles, NASA Mir Mission Scientist

Jerry Linenger has about two weeks remaining in his four-month tour of duty, and will be spending most of that time packing up his science equipment and personal gear for the return to Earth. Dr. John Charles, the NASA-Mir Mission Scientist gave this update on the Mir science program.

On their spacewalk this week Linenger and Tsibliev worked with three different experiment packages designed to gather information about the environment outside the Mir. Elaborate on what scientists are trying to learn from the Optical Properties Monitor, the Particle Impact Experiment, and the Mir Sample Return Experiment.
The Optical Properties Monitor, which was deployed on this EVA, is a set of test samples of materials that might be used in telescope lenses or windows or mirrors on future space stations and space vehicles. The OPM will be evaluating the effects of the spaceflight environment on those test materials for the duration of the exposure outside. In fact, it’s going to be measured once a week with a link-up to the inside of the space station, so periodically they’ll be able to make measurements while the degradation is taking place.
The PIE and and MSRE that were retrieved in this EVA were collecting particles and debris from the Mir spaceflight environment. The Particle Impact Experiment is collecting cosmic dust and manmade debris and measuring the effects of the atomic oxygen, which causes the glow sometimes seen on the shuttle’s surfaces during nighttime passes around the Earth. And the Mir Sample Return Experiment uses something called an aerogel, which has been described as solid smoke, a very low-density material to capture extremely high-velocity--hypervelocity--particles from further out in space.
These experiments will be analyzed on the ground postflight to see what has been captured and what the effects of the continued exposure to spaceflight is on structures like the Mir, which has been up there for 11 years now and the other structures that’ll be put up there for the International Space Station.
Also, there’s an ongoing experiment, the Mir Experiments Exposure Package, which was put outside on STS-79 and will be retrieved on STS-86. That’s just sampling the environment as an ongoing activity for the Mir program.
The results of all the experiment work Linenger’s done on the Mir aren’t known yet, of course, but what’s your assessment of the science work done during this increment of the Shuttle-Mir program?
We’re actually very happy with the amount of science that we believe Jerry’s been able to accomplish. Of course, there was a hickup toward the end of the mission with the fire onboard and the problems with the oxygen generator and the CO2 scrubber in the cooling loop, but communications with Jerry indicate that he understood the priorities correctly. He was there to assist the other cosmonauts in the repairs as appropriate and when time permitted, in the slack time, he did other experiments. So he was able to set up an experiment, let it run, go off, do some maintenance, come back, change the samples out, and go on. So, overall, I think we’re going to be very pleased when we get the samples and the data back and analyze them. I predict we’re going to be very pleased. Only one experiment of the entire payload was not accomplished, and that was deferred to give him additional time to be repair man in orbit instead of a scientist. And we’ll pick that one up on NASA-5 with Mike Foale.
Of the dozens of different experiments involved here, which would you say are likely to have the most immediate impact on planning for future long-term space flight? What have you learned already that’s being put to practice in planning for those missions?
This is where I get to use the “weasel words” on you and say that of course we can’t understand the effects of the experiments until we get back the data and analyze them. I think what we can say at this point is that we’ve learned a great deal about the process, which is, of course, one of the major points of the NASA Mir program, flying astronauts up to the Mir station, learning--or relearning in the case of the U.S.--how to do long-duration missions, how to accomplish science in the midst of the inevitable repairs and maintenance on the station. I think we’ve learned things about the process that will stand us in good stead as the space station era unfolds. Things about what is the proper balance between science and operations; how many people does it take to do certain things; how many people is enough; how many is too many. Overall I think we’re going to be a lot smarter having done the Mir Program than we would have been without it.
Some of Linenger’s work has been part of experiments that will continue after he comes home. Discuss some of the Mir onboard science that will be continued by Mike Foale during his tour on the Mir.
There is a large number of experiments that Mike is going to be continuing from Jerry and Jerry picked up from the previous crewmembers. In the Earth Sciences area, of course, there are the ongoing opportunities to observe and photograph sites on Earth outside the window, pretty much as time permits. Sometimes, when special sites are coming up under certain light conditions, time will actually be scheduled in the crewmembers’ timeline for them to break off what they’re doing and go and make the measurements.
The Piroda Module recently added to the Mir station has a variety of sensors outside it that relay their information directly to the ground, and that’s an ongoing data collection activity.
In the Microgravity area there’s a continued interest in growing protein crystals for analysis back on the ground to help us understand the structure of the proteins that make up our very beings. And also in the Microgravity area the use of the Microgravity Isolation Mount to provide an almost “supermicrogravity” environment to let experiments be undertaken in the areas of liquid behaviors in zero g and liquid diffusion experiments.
In the area of Risk Mitigation, in preparation for the International Space Station, we have the studies of the structural dynamics of the Mir station, of a complex vehicle made of parts that are joined together. We also are continuing to monitor the environment, both externally to the Mir with the MEEP that I mentioned earlier, and also internally to the Mir by sampling water and things like that inside.
In the area of Human Life Sciences we are continuing the work on studying the loss of bone mass in flight, study the intervertebral disks and the soft tissues of the body, studying the effects of spaceflight on sleep. There’s a French experiment that studies the way the human brain perceives the environment, which is going to continue.
In the area of Fundamental Biology, ongoing measurements of the radiation environment to give us additional insights into the kinds of effects of radiation with prolonged exposure in space. So those are all the kinds of ongoing experiments that Mike is going to inherit from Jerry.
Foale will arrive on the Mir next month with a science agenda of his own. Give us an overview of a couple of the experiments he’ll be starting up new during his four-and-a-half months onboard.
There are several of interest to all us. We will resume the work with the Russian-made greenhouse device. This time we’ll be growing mustard plants, trying to have several generations of the plants grown onboard the Mir station to study the effects of the very unusual microgravity environment on reproductive processes in plants, not only for its philosophic value in understanding the physiology of plants, but also for its relationship to providing foodstuffs for future crewmembers on long-duration flights.
Another very interesting experiment coming up on this mission is going to be a study involving the black-bodied beetle and its circadian rhythms in space. The beetle has the behavior of walking in light and not walking in the dark and with a little tiny revolving door the beetle’s going to push inside a special container, there’ll be a chance to study how his circadian rhythms do change in the presence of spaceflight factors. I should say there are 64 beetles going to be flown, so it’ll be a good sample size. And in the Microgravity area there’s going to be some more studies of special materials called colloids and how they might crystallize in the microgravity environment.
So, again, with the ongoing experiments and the new experiments, Mike Foale’s going to be very busy and we hope very productive scientifically.

Read Dr. John Charles' Oral History (PDF)

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Mir-23 - Week May 9, 1997

Interview with Frank Culbertson

Mike Foale and his STS-84 crewmates are set for their launch to the Mir next Thursday morning at 3:08 central time on what will be the sixth Shuttle-Mir docking mission and the third exchange of American astronauts living and working there in this first phase of the international space station program. Frank Culbertson, NASA’s Shuttle-Mir Program Manager lets us know more on the progress of that program.

Jerry Linenger’s in what should be the final week of his four months on the Mir, a time during which a number of unexpected events occurred. What’s your assessment of the work Linenger’s done on orbit?
“Jerry’s done a great job. Just like his predecessors he’s done an excellent job with the research, done even more than was scheduled and that was done before. However, I think the important thing to note is that all these flights are very difficult for the people who are gone for so long and operating in an isolated environment. This one had the added difficulty of the fire and the systems problems that they had to deal with. A lot of repair work, a lot of long hours, difficult environment to work in, so I would say this has been one of the most challenging missions I’ve ever heard of or seen and it’s certainly one of the most challenging in t his program.”
Last week you and your Russian counterpart, Valery Ryumin, both discussed your agreement on the criteria that will be used by both sides in assessing the safety of continuing these missions to the Mir; how do these standards apply to the transfer of Mike Foale to the Mir, and how solid is the process by which the American and Russian programs came to this agreement?
“We already had in place a number of safety agreements as well as operational rules that allow us to continue and allow us to understand the status of the Mir at any given time, as well as the shuttle itself during the joint missions and also when we’re operating on the Mir without the shuttle there. We have just reiterated the agreement in more detail, particularly in the life support area, what we’re looking for in terms of redundancy, maintenance capability, and spare parts availability, as well as the back-up capability to do the repair, such as having gaseous O2 or lyo canisters for the CO2 removal in case you have to repair on the major systems. What we looked at was just the rationale for continuing the mission, a part of which, of course, is the transfer of Mike and Jerry to and from the Mir, and we have met that criteria, the systems are very robust right now, and the repair work is going extremely well. The Russians have worked very hard on that. So we’re ready to continue the mission, the next step of which, of course, is to swap the crewmen.”
Linenger’s tour is the fourth of seven planned to Mir by American astronauts, and by the current schedule the American presence on the Mir has a little more than one more year to run. How much has been learned from these flights in preparing for the day when work on the Mir yields to work on the International Space Station?
“I think a tremendous amount has been learned during this period on the Mir. We’ve had the opportunity to work real problems with the fire and the systems repair, and you can’t buy that kind of training anywhere in a simulator. The fact that we had to respond to that, had to make decisions on which people’s lives depended and on which the success of the mission depended. Dealing with real cases puts the system under stress, and when you’re under stress you improve. It’s the same as training for any event or any mission. And I think that the Phase 1 experience is going to make Phase 2 much stronger. They will hopefully not have to repeat many of the problems and mistakes that have occurred during Phase 1 and in the earlier Mir missions, and we’ll be able to pick up where we left off and get going with really safe and successful missions.”
As we’ve mentioned, Atlantis is to launch to the Mir next Thursday, delivering Mike Foale and thousands of pounds of other supplies, including a new oxygen generation system. What’s the current plan for installation of that Elektron system, and are there any other late additions to the logistics payload?
“As far as the Elektron goes, we’re going to transfer it in the course of transferring all the other logistics, both science and the Russian hardware, to the Mir. They will then install it in the Kvant-1 module after they’ve repaired the cooling loop in that module. There are no plans right now to install it or check it at this time because that would be a temporary set-up that may, in fact, jeopardize the system more than give us information. They have a plan in place that will allow them to install it in its proper place with the proper cooling, probably within a few weeks after the shuttle leaves. They are also taking up a vacuum valve that'll allow them to begin assembling an additional Vozdhuk or CO2 removal system in the Core Module, which will give them more redundancy in that area.
As far as other late additions or changes, most of it is pretty standard stuff that we add late. A couple of things they’ve asked for for postfire and postfailure analysis on components on the Mir that they’ve asked us to bring down.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of June 6, 1997

Interview with Mike Foale

Mike Foale has just completed three weeks of his four-month stay on the Mir. In this interview he describes what it’s like to live on the space station.

As soon as I came onboard and I saw the hatch close, that was a pretty special moment for me. I thought, “Well, I just hope these guys really are as nice as I think they’ve been pretending to be,” and sure enough, it’s turned out that they really are great guys. So after the hatch was closed I just setttled into life pretty fast.
The day that the orbiter left, STS-84, with Charlie and the rest of the crew, was a little bit sad for us because we just had to get used to being just three people as opposed to 10. Then I got on with life onboard the station, and I’ve basically adapted to living here, doing all thedaily chores, cleaning, eating, all the other things.
I planted some turnip seeds in the greenhouse about four days ago. We’ve just got little seedlings now popping up--a little bit slower, I think, than they should be on Earth--but it’s rather interesting how these are developing, and we hope to produce seeds from these flowers in turn in about a month’s time after I’ve pollinated them. I literally have to work just like a bee in terms of pollinating these plants. I’m looking forward to that. And I’ve got a number of other experiments off to a pretty good start.
Overall our life here is a nice routine, it’s comfortable. I must say that I think it’s a very busy one, especially for the cosmonauts. I’ve managed to relax pretty well, I enjoy myself here. I just wish I could help Vasili and Sasha more as they work so hard to keep doing repairs and improvements to older station systems.
Really, life here is pretty easy, pretty comfortable. I don’t have to deal with office paperwork. I have a regular routine and I have very, very good companions to work with.
I think the station is in great shape. The things that we need to live are here: the food’s here, the air’s breathable, the oxygen’s being produced. It’s just that the cosmonauts are working harder and harder now to do extra things to make it better for the future, and that involves continuous repair work, so much so that I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better if we left it alone for a little while. So overall the conditions here are very good, and in fact Sasha and Vasili had a big success yesterday when they finally managed to isolate a leak in an older module, called the Kvant module, which is something they’ve been chasing for the whole year.
The weather here is basically fine and we get sun every 25 minutes--in fact more often now because we’re in a solar orbit. The humidity’s about 70%, the temperature ranges from about 86° down to the low 70s in different parts of the station. Overall it’s a very pleasant place. It doesn’t rain!

Read more about Mike Foale and NASA-5

Read Mike Foale's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of June 13, 1997

Interview with Mike Foale

Mike Foale has been on Mir almost a month. In an interview with the BBC he had these comments.

You’ve now been up there for nearly four weeks. How are you getting on with your Russian colleagues?
“I think I’m doing fine with them and they don’t seem to have any problems with me. I certainly enjoy their company. Specifically we actually spend a lot of time just talking and discussing life and the universe and general things. We sit down to meals and we spend probably an hour for every meal, and that’s three meals a day, just chatting and talking.”
What are you missing most?
“I don’t really know. I’m having a good time here. It’s hard to say, really. Not much at the moment. I have very good contact with my wife, Rhonda, and I talk to her once a week. I send e-mail to her. That’s a lot of fun. And I talk to radio hams around the world. And the view is fantastic and the work is interesting, so I’m having a good time.”
What are your living conditions like? Is Mir comfortable?
Mir is comfortable, mostly because you’re in zero gravity and when you sleep, in particular, that’s when I really appreciate the comfort. You just float in a slightly fetal-like position but in a sleeping bag that surrounds you. As a result of that, you sleep very, very well at night, and I’ve been sleeping better than I have done for years. As far as living conditions, eating and drinking, we have all the facilities and amenities here and it’s pleasant. We even have some treats that were sent up on the Progress supply ships like chocolates and things, so it’s a pretty good life. It’s better than most camping trips if you would want to compare it with something.”
What has been the most unexpected thing, or is everything exactly as you thought it would be?
“I didn’t quite know what to expect living here, but I had talked a lot to previous cosmosnauts. I talked to Sasha and Vasili who are with me before they launched in February from Vaikanur. And when we came here, we flew up with Elena Kondakova, who spent six months on the space station three years ago and I talked a lot to her as well. You learn things like how noisy it is and whether you have to wear earplugs at night, or what it’s like to sleep. All those questions were answered before I came here and there weren’t many big surprises. Overall I would say my impression is it’s better than I first expected. It’s easy to live here. The windows are better than I expected. So overall I’m very content.
Can you very briefly explain some of your science experiments?
“There are two experiments that I’m doing that are quite big ones. One is a joint project between American universities in Utah and Louisiana and the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. We’re growing a plant that is rather like the rapeseed that you see in England, the fields and fields of yellow flowers. It’s actually a turnip. The seeds have been planted in a seedbed that consists of a cloth wick surrounded by sponge through which the water is fed at intervals. The seeds germinate and start growing. The lights are strong and above them and that’s the direction we hope they grow, but half of them got quite confused and dove down under the wick in a rather strange fashion. Some of them did full loops before they came back up again.
“There are sensors that measure the humidity of the soil in the rootbeds, as well as simple marker posts that help us do photography and calibration of the height of the plants. These plants we expect to grow and produce flowers in the next week. They’ve already been growing about two weeks. The Latin name of the plant is brassica and it will go through its full cycle where I actually fix the plants and preserve them for return to the Earth over a period of 30 days. Since I’m going to be here for roughly four and half-five months, I will get a chance to do this three times. We hope that we will produce seeds after I have pollinated the flowers of these plants. And then replant those, which is something we’ve never done before. No one’s ever produced seeds in space that they could plant again.

“The other experiment is an investigation of the weakest solids on the Earth that you could ever make. They’re actually gels, a bit like jelly, and we’re studying the properties of those in the microgravity environment to see if we can come up with new materials for future use.”
How would you sum up your experience so far?
I’m having a good time here. We’ve been working hard on the greenhouse experiment, on the C-gel experiment. We’ve done a lot of microbiological investigations. For example, I’ve swabbed a table and picked up the microbes from it and grown those on petrie dishes and left them in a warm place so that the colonies that are on the petrie dishes will grow up and be counted. I’ve done other investigations using an instrument that Jerry Linenger, my predecessor, took out on an EVA, the Optical Properties Monitor, and we’ve been gathering data from that instrument, which is mounted to the outside of the Krystall Module and the Docking Module.
“Overall I’ve been having a very relaxed and easy time. Everything’s going rather well. It’s a lot easier than I expected.

Read more about Mike Foale and NASA-5

Read Mike Foale's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of June 13, 1997

Interview with Jerry Linenger

Three weeks ago Jerry Linenger returned to Earth aboard the shuttle Atlantis on the STS-84 mission to wrap up 132 days in space, most of that on the Russian Space Station Mir, the second-longest space flight in U.S. history by an astronaut.

Dr. Linenger, do you have a sense of what was the most important lesson you got from your experience for NASA’s current course of long-term space flight? What’s the dividend that you’re trying to convey into that future planning?
“I guess first of all it’s a great adventure and it’s something that I’m very glad that participated in. I think the main lesson learned is that you have to be very flexible and that things will happen when you’re out on the outpost that the crew on that outpost has to take care of. And you have to jury-rig some things, and you have to do repairs using less-than-ideal hardware and components, and you have to use a lot of ingenuity to keep space stations alive until your next resupply can come up and help you out with the needed gear. So I think the lesson learned is that you need to be very flexible, you need to be very responsive, and you need to have a lot of ingenuity to colonize space.”
You seem to have had a particularly difficult time because of the malfunctions with the space station. We see the flight as a four-month excursion for you as an astronaut, but the lead up to it and the recuperation can run into a couple of years. What kind of a toll does that take on a person like yourself, and even your family and those who are close to you?
“It is a two-year process, and I’m still not complete. You don’t want to push the coast button too soon, and I still have a lot of postflight testing, and as a physician I realize it’s very important that we do a very thorough analysis of my bones, my muscles, things like that. I felt a lot better than I would expect, I guess. Maybe past background helps out--being flexible, United States Navy, being deployed overseas, going off to aircraft carriers--I was fairly prepared for it, and it was an interesting time being over in Russia looking at new training techniques, working with different folks over there. The time on the station was probably more challenging than I had expected, but when you’re busy and when it’s important things you’re doing, the days do fly by and I never felt all the strain of isolation. Some of the things I was anticipating really never came to be. And for my family, you marry the right woman, and we consulted before I ever got into this and she thought it would be a great adventure also and she’s held up very well and we'll have our next child in a couple of weeks and then we move on from there.”
From the ground, a lot of the unexpected things that happened to you looked pretty scary, pretty worrisome. They’re not the kind of things we’re used to seeing on space flights up until now. Describe, if you would, as you look back on them now, how worrisome were they? How scary were they? How close, how far from disaster? The sort of thing that we all wondered about at the time. You had to deal with it then, and I suspect couldn’t sit back and think about it. Now that you’ve had some time, what do you think about it?
“I think there are two different things we’re looking at. One is survival of the station, and that’s a separate category that doesn’t get your pulse up but gets your level of concern up, of course. So survival of the station, fixing equipment that had malfunctioned, cooling loops and things like that, you knew you had enough time to deal with those problems and you methodically worked at them. Things like the fire or when we had the resupply vessel coming and were’nt able to pick up the camera from that resupply vessel, those get your pulse up, but I would say again, I surprised myself and maybe my crewmates surprised themselves, that there was no panic, there was no real fear. And I’m not trying to be stoic, I’m just saying that when that fire happened my first response was to say, “ Open a window!” and then, “This is ridiculous, Jerry. You can’t open a window.” And then I said, “OK. We need to fight this fire. What are we going to do?” And I see smoke billowing out and I say, “I need oxygen.” I go over and get the mask and start breathing. I say, “OK. I’m breathing. Now we’ve got to start organizing the six of us to fight the fire and get ready to evacuate.” It reminds me of the days in the Emergency Room as a physician where they say “Take your own pulse first, and then start working the patient.” You need to calm yourself down and attack the problem that’s at hand. And things like the fire, it’s got a beginning and an end, and when the fire’s out, it was a relief, of course, but also the next thing we had to do was try to conserve the oxygen supply, and so we actually had to just not talk, just lie there and try to breathe quietly and try to relax. So the difference in intensity was remarkable. I slept at night, I wasn’t up at night biting my finger nails. However, the next day if something else would go a little wrong, we would have to work on another system, it was another thing you had to add to your plate of tasks that you wanted to accomplish. The other thing I had on my side was that there was no place to go and so I didn’t mind working overtime and I got a lot of fulfillment out of carrying out the objectives of our science program and I would do that late into the night and felt good about that. At the end of the day I’d feel that we really accomplished something worthwhile. ”
Towards that end, several cosmonauts have told me they find it remarkable that American astronauts don’t get extra pay for going to the space station because it really is more difficult than it appears over time. There is a point where you go from “Oh, wow, look how far I am from home!” to, “My god, look how far I am from home!” How did you make those mental and emotional adjustments, and what did you learn from them that will apply to the longer-term mission, the missions to other places and so on, that is part of this learning curve that everyone is trying to put together?
“As far as the pay, it’s my job, I’m an astronaut, that’s what I do and I’m not rich, but I’m able to support my family and I’m satisfied with that so I don’t think I need any special bonus or any special treatment. As far as the issues of isolation and things that I had tried to prepare myself for before flight, it never really came into my consciousness very much because I was busy and concentrating on things. It’s like on Earth if you have a project that you’re really excited about you lose track of time you’re into it so much. That’s what happened on station, so I never was able to observe how I was adjusting to isolation. I would look at myself as a physican and say I’m doing OK physically, and psychologically I’d measure myself against my crewmates and the whole time I had no adjustment problem whatsoever. I don’t know if there’s a secret to that; I think past life experience helps you out in those situations.”
Is there any thought that maybe there should be a couple of astronauts that go up together? Would that help as opposed to going one at a time? Would that make any difference, two cosmonauts, two astronauts together?
“The station was set up originally for two people onboard and maybe a third and you’re starting to push the limits of the systems. For example, the reason we were using the canister that started on fire was because we had six people onboard and the standard equipment generates enough oxygen for a crew of three. So it’s a very closed environment. When you start adding more people to it, you start stressing the life support systems beyond what you want to do. So I don’t think it’s practical, first of all. Secondly, I never really had a problem being the only American up there and I knew both the crews that I was with during the stay there, the first crew for about a month, and those two left and two new crew came up. We had a good working relationship and I never felt lonely or in a bad way, so I really didn’t have a problem with any of that so I don’t see a need for a change. Practically, it’s very hard to do also.”
It seems that everybody wants to walk off the shuttle when they get back. Does that really seem to be a big problem? Did NASA really want you to come out on a stretcher?
“It didn’t turn into any big thing. I walked off, and actually the communications were bad enough to Mir that I never really got word that they wanted me to go off on a stretcher for medical studies. So when the first person asked what I planned to do, I said I planned on standing up and walking just like I always do. It wasn’t any great effort on my part. It was a normal landing. I went through 1.5 g entry, didn’t feel badly, I moved my arms and I didn’t have any problem with any of it, so I just did the normal thing, got out of my parachute, sat on the edge of the seat, and when the flight surgeon came in I said I’m ready to go and I walked off. So it wasn’t a big deal and since then no one’s seemed to make it a big deal.”
I’m wondering about your physical re-adaptation to Earth gravity. Are there are types of things that we might take for granted like just standing up that were difficult for you upon your return?
“It was much less difficult than I anticipated. One thing I can tell you, during my rehab I’ve tried to do low-impact things so I was and am swimming a lot. The water felt like jello the first three days, it felt like mercury the next three days, and now, after about two weeks, it’s started feeling like water again. There is a certain resistance that the Earth offers and that gravity offers. Driving is something that is not a big problem because I sold my truck before I left two years ago. The flight surgeons are cautious of me driving but it hasn’t been a problem yet, but I feel capable of driving. But there will be some objective tests about whether I’m properly oriented. I think if you saw me walking down the street you’d say, “There goes Jerry,” and you would never know that I’d been in space for four or five months.
So at this point you’re pretty much re-acclimated to gravity?
“I am very much re-acclimated. I feel very normal. I can pick up my son, I can toss him around the pool. I am very normal. On the other hand, when you look at the medical tests, I do have the bone loss, I do have some muscle strength deficits, and being a sports medicine physician I realize that you need to be very cautious until you get your strength back up before you do things like running. I’m sticking very exactly to the program that the trainer has outlined for me and I’m doing mostly water work right now until my muscles get back to 100%.”
What’s the due date for the baby and have you picked out a name like Uri or something yet?
“We’re still battling over names. Last time we looked out the hospital window and it was St. John’s so my son is John, so it might be that type of decision again. We don’t have a boy’s name; we have a girl’s name, and I don’t know if it’s bad luck or anything so I’m going to keep quiet about that, let my wife talk about the names picked out. But the due date is the 27th, although they’re not 100% sure of that, so when the next child’s ready to come we’ll be happy to start caring for him--or her.”
When you came off the shuttle and met your wife, were you in better shape after four months in space or was she in worse shape after eight months pregnancy?
“She’s in great shape. It’s almost a cold pregnancy thing, they keep talking about that, and I think I feel that now because I felt a bit heavier and I had my long hair. Once I cut that off I was OK, that took care of five pounds. But I think I can relate pretty well to what she feels carrying a child right now, and after the birth maybe we’ll both do our rehab together. But she’s a very normal pregnant woman who’s doing just great.”
With your craving for pretzels both when you were in Russia and in space, have you been offered cases of pretzels from any manufacturers like Shannon was offered M&Ms and other junk food?
“No, I wasn’t, but many friends have given me pretzels. I’m sick of pretzels. I don’t want pretzels any more. It wasn’t a terrible craving at the start. It was just that people kept asking me, and I’d say, well I’d kinda like pretzels, but I’ve had enough pretzels. I’ve gotten my pretzel fix for the next year.”
Before the flight you told us that your big leisure time activity there was going to be taking up an atlas and trying to become the best geographer on or off the planet. How well did you succeed, and how much more of the planet did you get to see that you didn’t see on your first spaceflight?
“As far as seeing the planet, I just had more time to see the planet. We were busy up there; however, I took the Earth observation very seriously and they had sent up a lot of film with me and my goal was to complete the experiments to 100%, that was my objective, and I reached that objective. I think I shot over 10,000 shots of the Earth, and I notice, for example, when I go by and see a map on the wall now, my mind flashes to a picture of what I had seen out the window. So, for example, when I see a map and I look and I see the St. Lawrence Seaway, I can snap very quickly to the view, almost can picture everything in my mind of the view out the window from the space station and see the ice floes and see the breakup of those ice floes and almost run a film through my mind. So I am very happy with the result of that. I feel like I know the Earth very well.”
How much further north and south were you able to view from the flight path? I think Shannon said that she had seen Antarctica, which she had not seen on any of her previous flights. And did you look a lot over your home state of Michigan?
“I got some great shots of my home state of Michigan, and again, that was very dynamic as the winter ice floes broke up over, for example, Lake Superior, and I could follow that systematically. I actually was not any more north. My last flight on STS-64 was a higher inclination flight, so I think I just saw more. There was no increased coverage.”
Can you tell us about any of your medical experiments that you were doing during the flight, in particular the one where you put some contraption on your eyelid to measure how well you slept?
“I could get a computer printout everyday of my rapid eye movement and my deep sleep. That was what the sensor on my eyelid was for, and I also did some more intense things with full electrodes on the head. But from what I could see from a sample of one, my sleep pattern did change throughout the flight. I was well rested every day and I required the same amount of sleep, but my rapid eye movement seemed to increase and my periods of deep sleep seemed to decrease. Also falling asleep, I would fall asleep, wake up--usually I fall asleep and I’m out like a rock, so this was a change--I’d fall asleep, and after about half an hour wake up and be wide awake for about an hour near the end of the flight before I could fall back asleep. As I say, it wasn’t anything on my mind in particular, it was just I think a bit of a change due to circadian rhythms and not being exposed to day/night cycles as we are on Earth.”
What are some of the things you wanted to do and have done when you got back to Earth for enjoyment? Things you weren’t able to experience in space.
“Very simple things actually. People ask if you want to go cross-country skiing or whatever, some special thing. What I found as pleasurable as anything is, the first morning back, I went out in my back yard, grabbed a bucket and started trimming my bushes, and gardening, and picking weeds, and watching cardinals fly by, and just doing some basic things that we all take for granted. I was in heaven in my back yard with all the green and the flowers and the trees.”
Have you given any thought to your future professional plans? For example, do you have any desire to fly in space for a long time again? Include, too, your thoughts on whether it’s realistic to expect astronauts to make more than one flight of several months in the future.
“I think the latter part of your question, it’s definitely feasible to fly multiple times and I could see myself doing it. I’m also now at the 20-year point of my Navy career, and I think I’ve had a good career. I think I’ve served honorably the whole time and with integrity, and my goal was always to put my 20 years in to the United States Navy, and I’ve done that. So at this time, my future plans might include retirement. But that is not due to the spaceflight, that’s just life circumstances. As far as flying again in the future, I think it’s a very realistic thing. I think you need recovery time between those flights to make sure you’re back to baseline. The only hesitation I’d have with that is radiation exposure and things like that, which need to be looked at very carefully.”
Do you mean retiring just from the Navy or retiring also from the astronaut corps? And what, if anything, do you miss about being aboard the Mir? What parts of it were truly enjoyable that you might wish you could recreate or experience, perhaps in shorter bursts?
“The biggest joy is conducting good experiments, and I had some very interesting things. One is looking in a glovebox at flame propagation, and after the fire, after seeing the real thing and then being able to experiment, change ventilation rates, things like that, it was very interesting. I felt much more like a scientist than I did during shuttle flights when you have people looking over your shoulder saying tweak it this way. After a while I felt I knew flame flow as good as anybody on the ground and when I’m tweaking the experiment I’m sure the experimenter’s going to be very happy to get the film back of what I had done. I adjusted based on my observations. It’s work, but it’s very pleasurable. A sense of accomplishment is a big pleasure. Looking out the window and learning about the Earth and watching the changes was pleasurable. Just being in that close group of two cosmonauts and myself working together and overcoming some difficulties. It’s like your car breaks down and your buddy comes over and at the end of the day you have it fixed and you feel good about it and you drive away in your car. It’s the same sort of feeling up there when you work together and things work out.
As far as retirement, it’s a little early to say, but the possibility exists of retiring from NASA also.”
How’s your successor, Mike Foale, doing, in light of your words when you left that he might experience some difficulties, some trial? How do you think he’s doing?
“I think I just said, “Mike you’re going to have some challenges ahead.” I think Mike fully expects to have those challenges and from what I’ve heard he’s doing very well. They’re looking at some of the cooling loop leaks again that we were unable to isolate and they’ve cleared out Kvant and are starting to do some of that work. I’ve been very busy--like I said, my flight isn’t really over until I complete a lot of the medical testing and debriefing, so I haven’t been closely talking to Mike. But from everything I’ve heard, he’s doing very well.”
On the cooling loop issue, there was some concern about your exposure to the ethylene glycol. Are you willing to talk about that in terms of you own concerns for your future health? Do you think it’s an issue potentially or not an issue, or do you know?
“I can talk about myself. I think we were getting reactions to the ethylene glycol. It was a definite physiologic reaction. When we would pressurize the loop we’d feel a difference. We’ve done medical tests and I can comment on my own. I’m not holding anything back there. I did full pulmonary function test and everything looks good. And I did some supplemental tests beyond the normal ones you would do and those also look good. So I don’t expect long-term ill-health effects from that. I think we need to be concerned about it though and look carefully at it.
Read more about Jerry Linenger and NASA-4

Read Jerry Linenger's letters to his son

Mir-23 - Week of June 20, 1997

Interview with John Charles

More information on the science of Mike Foale's mission to the Mir was provided by Dr. John Charles, the mission scientist for Foale's portion of the Shuttle-Mir program.

What are the goals of the greenhouse and what progress has Foale made to this point?
The goal is to grow a set of advanced plants through several generations and to keep planting seeds from previous generations to get the second and third generation. In fact, we hope to get three generations of plants. The plants have now produced some flowers and Mike is pollinating them using the bee sticks to simulate the action of bees on Earth, transferring the pollen from flower to flower. While he's doing that, of course, he's collecting the pollen on the bee stick and those bee sticks are kept for postflight analysis in order to track the entire developmental history of the plants in flight. And that is the major goal of this greenhouse experiment, to grow plants for multiple generations in flight and to track as closely as possible the developmental biology of those plants as they grow, to understand the differences that are normal in spaceflight.
Another experiment Foale's been working with for some time is a microgravity investigation called colloid gelation. What's the goal of this experiment, and what has Foale accomplished?
This is a continuation of an experiment done on a previous mission that involves the understanding on a very simple level of the physics of gels, of colloids, in spaceflight, colloids being suspensions of unlike particles and other solutions. These have applications in such things as lasers and liquid crystal display screens. The liquid crystal display in your computer is a sort of colloid. Anything we can do to understand the physics of that and how these things develop is very beneficial in many areas. A lot of the work that's being done requires weightlessness because the unlike particles tend to sediment out if they're exposed to gravity. The work he's been doing so far is getting a set of samples ready by stirring up some viscous fluid, suspensions. The goal is, over the first several days, to understand the initial stages in the formation of colloids, so he's been making measurements of several samples every few days. He's now to the point where he's able to set those samples aside. Once he mixes them up, once again he sets them aside for about 35 days and lets them go at it, very slowly, in microgravity to form the colloidal gel that will then be analyzed at the end of the growth period, and then he's got another set of colloidal gels to grow after that, following the same kind of procedure.
In his five weeks onboard Mir Foale has begun work with several other experiments. What is the status of some of those other investigations?
We're very pleased to see the conclusion early next week of the next bout of the sleep study. In fact, in this case it's the cosmonauts that are finishing up their second sleep study. Remember Jerry Linenger did three separate 12-day sessions of sleep monitoring on his mission.The cosmonauts that flew with Jerry are still up there and they're finishing up the second of their three 12-day sessions, and it sounds as if things are going fairly smoothly in that regard. It's an ambitious investigation in the human life sciences, and we're always glad when something like that is successful and completed.
We also have some other investigations such as various investigations to measure the crewmembers' impact on the space station structure by moving around and also the impact on the space station structure by things like undocking and docking of modules, and work on those areas is continuing. In fact, they're troubleshooting an electronics box over the next several days to try and get ready for a series of dockings and undockings of the Progress modules over the next several weeks. So that work is ongoing as well.
Read Dr. John Charles' Oral History (PDF)

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Mir-23 - Week of June 27, 1997

Interview with Frank Culbertson

On Friday, June 27, Frank Culbertson, NASA's Shuttle-Mir program manager, provided an update on the status of the Mir-23 crew and the Russian station.

What's the word from mission control in Korolev this morning as to the health of Foale and his crewmates and the condition of the Mir station?

The crewmembers are continuing to do well. Things are darkened on the station to save power. They had to power down again earlier today because of a loss of power from some of the batteries, which they have now regained, but they did have to operate in a quiet environment for a while. But the crew sounds very good and seems upbeat about their possibilities of bring things back to a better situation.

What occurred Wednesday morning as commander Vasily Tsibliev attempted to redock the progress vessel to Mir?

The Progress is docked to the end of Kvant-1. They had undocked the Progress the previous day and were going to bring it back aboard testing the manual docking system. Some time during the approach Tsibliev was unable to control the closure and possibly lost control laterally. At any rate, the Progress sailed past the docking module and then went into, we think, the array first, on the Spektr, bounced off that into the radiator, and then somehow cleared the station. In the process of that it appears to have punched a hole in the solar array and bent it, dented the radiator, and somewhere in there an opening occurred in the pressure hull of the Spektr, which resulted in the beginning of a pressure loss.

What, if anything, is known at this point about the cause of the inability to control the progress?

We don't really know yet what the cause of that is. The Russians are doing some further tests today and tomorrow on the Progress itself to try to give it some pulses and some commands to see how it responds and see if they can isolate what the problem was.

Describe the action taken by Tsibliev, Foale, and flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin immediately after the collision.

They sensed pretty quickly that they were having a depressurization. They heard a hiss and felt the pressure change in their ears and began going through the procedures they have onboard. They also apparently recognized immediately that it was in the Spektr so they began actions to close that hatch, which they did fairly rapidly. I've heard estimates between 8 and 20 minutes as to how long it took them to close that hatch, but I suspect it was fairly quickly. They cut some data cables, disconnected some power cables, which was fortunate, because that allows us the option now of reconnecting that power through the Spektr in a future repair activity. Then, after they closed the hatch, they immediately began monitoring the pressure in the rest of the station to make sure it was stable. It was, and in fact they actually gained some pressure through a couple of tanks they had and it's remained that way since then with the hatch closed.

Spektr is where Foale has been living, and is also home to perhaps half of the American scientific experiments being conducted during his flight. At this point, what's the prognosis for on-orbit repairs to Spektr, particularly the ability to regain the power being generated by its three intact solar arrays, as well as the continuation of Foale's science agenda?

It's not likely we'll be able to regain access to the module itself or repressurize it in the near future, although I'm sure they'll look at that at some time, when it's appropriate. Their initial priority is to regain the power from the three undamaged arrays. They looked at a couple of different options: an EVA on the outside to string cables to another module and also doing what we call an "internal" EVA in the transfer node, which is located between all the modules. They can get in that node suited and then take the hatch off the Specktr, replace it with a modified hatch that would have connectors routed through it, to which they would connect the solar arrays directly so they could recharge batteries in the rest of the station. This will be complicated and take some time. They are manufacturing the hardware for that on the ground now. They have said they are confident it will be finished on Sunday. It will be send to Baikanur on Monday, loaded on the Progress, and then launched to orbit for the Russians to both begin the activity and also to rehearse this quite a bit before they do it on orbit.

Has there been any indication yet as to what role Mike Foale would play if such a thing were to be attempted?

The current plan is for him to be in the Soyuz and the transfer node would be between him and the rest of the station, but him being in the Soyuz would ensure that all three crewmembers have a way to get home should a problem occur during the EVA itself. So he would monitor and probably help with the communications during that time, but would be located in the Soyuz for several hours while they conducted it.

How does the loss of the power from Spektr's solar arrays impact the Mir's other systems, including its attitude control and environmental controls?

Because the batteries in the Spektr were the newest ones, they were relying on them most. Spektr was also directly powering some other modules like the Krystal, which is located where t he docking module it. They had cables running directly to the Krystal, so they lost all power in the Krystal initially, so they're not able to recharge the batteries there. Also some of the Priroda was powered down. They've relocated some of their better batteries and they went to a very low power level and a high charge state in order to regain maximum power. They did power off the gyrodynes, which provided attitude control, and some of the life support systems. They had the life support powered on for a while until they had a power glitch last night, which resulted in some battery discharge. They've now recovered that and are working toward regaining gyrodyne control for the attitude of the station.

A new Progress vessel with a fresh load of supplies had been scheduled to launch today, but that was delayed. What's the current plan for the next Progress launch?

They've taken that Progress off the pad in Baikanur and returned it to the hangar for reprocessing and they're also going to unload some of the cargo that's on there, replace it with this repair hardware that they're developing now, as well as some items that we're getting together for Mike Foale, such as an additional medical kit, and some personal effects. He's without his toothbrush and razor and things like that. We'll get those over there this weekend and load them some time next week. The current estimate is for the Progress to launch some time between the 5th and the 8th of July. It may be a little later than that depending on how things go, but they're still trying to get it off the pad as quickly as they can with the modified cargo.

Johnson Space Center Director George Abbey has appointed a Mir-Progress mishap investigation team, to be chaired by veteran astronaut Mike Baker, who commanded the Mir docking mission this past January. Along with the work of that panel, what's the next step for the NASA side of the Shuttle-Mir program as the Russian space program assesses the situation onboard the Mir?

We're doing several things. One of them is, in addition to our panel, the Russians, of course, have their own commission that has been chartered to investigate this and we're sending a representative to that. We're also sending people over to work with them in the planning for the EVA and the systems recovery. We already have some people in Moscow who are already working with them in that regard. The other thing we're doing on this side is to assess the power that we will have available with or without the repair and what type of science program we might be able to continue for Mike Foale and for the future increments based on the two estimates of power levels. We're also assessing what has been lost in the Spektr, what could be replaced, maybe on future shuttle or Progress missions to continue some of that science and how we continue the things that are available to us in the Priroda and the Krystal such as the greenhouse and the beetle experiment. People are looking at that and they're also looking at, if we were to effect a repair of the module and repressurize it, how that might be done, how the International Space Station people might play in that because they obviously will have a great interest in how effective that could be. And also we'll look at what the usability of the articles in the Spektr might be if it were repressurized and whether there'd be any hazards present.

To recap, the situation is stable and the crew is alright?

Yes, the crew is fine and going through the normal procedure that they have used many times in the past during a power down and a repower of the gyrodynes and seem to be in good spirits. Mike says it's interesting work and that it's hard work moving the batteries around, but it does keep them busy, and they seem to be in real good spirits. It's certainly another challenge that we had not anticipated, but I believe it's a chance for everybody to learn more about the difficulties and the opportunities for operating in space. It's not something that we can say would never happen to us nor would ever happen in the future and so everything we can learn from this we will learn, in addition to ensuring, number one, that the crew is safe. As you know, they always have a safe return in the Soyuz vehicle. That has been thoroughly checked out and is ready to go if needed.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of June 26, 1997

Audio-only Communication with Mike Foale

Keith Zimmerman, NASA Operations Lead at Mission Control Center in Moscow, talked to Mike Foale about his personal needs and the state of the experiments onboard Mir after the collision with the Progress resupply vessel.

KZ - Michael, this is Keith
MF - OK. What do you need to know?
KZ - OK. First, how are you doing?
MF - Great. As great as you can be without all your stuff?
KZ - I understand. That's the next question. What personal stuff did you lose that needs to be replaced and what medical stuff did you lose that needs to be replaced?
MF - I propose that we send up a complete shuttle medical kit, the MBK and EMK [Emergency Medical Kit]. That's what I propose, and then if you have room, the MSMK [Mir Shuttle Medical Kit], things like aspirin and some of the more common items out of the MSMK.
KZ - OK. Copy that. What about personal stuff? Hygiene kit, exercise shoes, personal items, clothes?
MF - Exercise shoes I will need for sure. I don't have those now. There are no shoes that will fit me onboard. I also need my harness for the treadmill and I need the expanders.
KZ - Copy all.
MF - I would really like to have a shaver, the Phillips shaver that Boeing does and sent for me, and I'd like to have toothbrushes and toothpaste. Maybe about two or three tubes of toothpaste. That would do it.
KZ - Copy.
MF - And then I'd like to add two diskettes that Ken Bowersox could prepare for me in Houston.
KZ - Copy.
MF - That will about do it. Oh, greenhouse is almost totally complete except it hasn't got the leaf bags. The leaf bags are in O [Spektr].
KZ - You've got all the greenhouse kits except leaf bags?
MF - Yes, if you can get leaf bags onto the cruiser [Progress], it would be great. We've lost all of the bio stuff [Life Sciences investigations], you know the micro stuff [Microbial Sampling Kits], the BDL [Bar Code Data Logger], the UBC [Universal Battery Charger], and all the sleep equipment's in O.
KZ - OK. Copy all that. What about FDF [Flight Data File]?
MF - FDF, I'm in great shape except for Attachment 13, and we've got the Russian one here.
KZ - What's left inside the one active TEF [Thermoelectric Freezer] or the one that was powered off?
MF - The one active TEF had the last blood draw in it.
KZ - Just the last blood draw?
MF - Yeah. And that's now spoiled of course.
KZ - Actually, it'll hold temperature for a while.
MF - OK.
KZ - What about MIPS [Mir Interface to Payloads System] computers?
MF - COSS [Crew Onboard Support System laptop] and all my hard drives are in Spektr. And I have no printer. A printer would really help. If someone made an image of my hard drive that would be great, if they could send that up. I lost everything in terms of computer stuff.
KZ - What about, how many MIPS laptops do you still have?
MF - I have two MIPS laptops available.
KZ - And you've got the controller and the optical drive as well?
MF - I have one controller, one optical drive.
KZ - What about SAMS [Space Acceleration Measurement System] disks?
MF - All the SAMS disks were in O [Spektr]. We're down to about three SAMS disks, including the two in SAMS.
KZ - What about photo-video equipment - cameras, films, videocassettes?
MF - I have one camera with cables. I have just a few videocassettes, but I have enough to do data for the next few weeks, I think, for Greenhouse.
KZ - How about 35-mm and 70-mm camera and film?
MF - 35-mm and 70-mm I have. I have those. Luckily I had those out of Spektr, they were in E [Priroda].
KZ - OK. Copy. What about Glycol tubes?
MF - Glycol tubes are in E.
KZ - In which one?
MF - They're all saved. They're in Priroda.
KZ - What about QUELD [Queens University Experiment in Liquid Diffusion]? Do we think that was all OK?
MF - That's all OK. That's all saved.
KZ - MISDE [Mir Structural Dynamics Experiment] and EDLS [Enhanced Dynamic Load Sensors], same thing except for the cable that was cut?
MF - That's all saved, yes.
KZ - I guess the only other real question right now is, on Priroda, do you know what things were powered on when the power got cut, which switches may still be on, that sort of thing?
MF - I turned off all PUPs [Payload Utility Panels] and I turned off all equipment in an orderly fashion.
KZ - Excellent.
MF - The only thing that I'm worried about now is the beetles. The beetles are living on batteries.
KZ - Right. The batteries will last 30 days, but they won't be able to do a light pulse, which is on Tuesday, so we will try to get 1 amp by then.
KZ - Where were you during the event?
MF - In Base Block watching Vasiley, getting ready to take laser marks with the laser range finder, when Sasha said to get into the Soyuz quickly. I was actually in the Node at impact.
KZ - Do you have any words for Rhonda?
MF - Just that things are fine. I felt the same as when I landed in the water. It's all over now and I'm glad we're getting it all together again.
Read more about Mike Foale and NASA-5

Read Mike Foale's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of July 11, 1997

July 7, 1997, Press Briefing - Frank Culbertson

On Monday, July 11, Frank Culbertson, NASA Program Manager of the Shuttle-Mir Program, gave a status update and answered questions from the press.

Culbertson: “It’s a real pleasure to be here to today and of course we’re going to give you a rundown of the status of the Mir and the situation onboard. I think the most important thing to note is that any event, such as a depressurization, as serious as it is, has a number of steps that have to be gone through before you recover and get back into a situation you’re comfortable with. This morning, at about 1:00 a.m. CDT, was a very important step in that process. I believe we’ve passed the survival phase where the crew is back to relatively stable operation, able to exercise, able to maintain the environment, and now we’re back in the recovery phase of getting back as much as we can of this station’s capability and assessing where can we go from here. Getting that Progress docked this morning, which I must say was done very successfully, very smoothly, by the Russians, was a major step in that whole process.

“The Progress has a 0.2-0.3 meter per second (1 foot per second) approach speed, which is about 10 times the closure rate we use on the shuttle. However, it’s a speed that works very well for a small coaxial vehicle and has worked for many years for them in this system. It was a very smooth contact, very solid capture, and no problems were noted during the entire process by either the crew or the personnel on the ground. Very shortly after capture they extended the shock absorber system, realigned it, and brought it in for final latching.

“They have delayed the pressure checks and hatch opening on the Progress at this point. They had planned on doing it about two revolutions after the docking, but because the docking attitude that they went to for lighting purposes was not as productive for electrical power as they had expected, the charge level on the batteries was a little lower than they would like, so in order to make sure that they do not have to spin the gyrodynes down again or lose attitude control during this phase, they went to jet control for the docking to ensure a good stable attitude, and then because they were not able to recharge during the docking as they had hoped they would, they have remained on jet control and are continuing to point toward the Sun and continue the charging process for the time being. Once that’s complete, through the crew’s night, they will at that point go into free drift, which they need to do for the pressure checks themselves, repressurize the vestibule between the Progress and the Mir itself, and let that sit for a while to make sure there are no leaks in the seals, and then open the hatches and begin the unloading process on the Progress itself.

“Mr. Simyonov, the head of Energia, has directed his people to use the normal unloading process. They can do it in two days if they need to, but there’s no need to rush the crew and they want to get everything unloaded in as orderly a fashion as they can. One point to remember is that they’ve lost some stowage space with the Spektr being closed up so they need to be careful about where they put things and make sure they have access to them as needed.

“They will eventually completely unload the Progress prior to conducting the EVA that they’re hoping to do in mid July, and the current plan is to have the hatch closed on the Progress itself during that EVA. That will allow them the option, if they had to undock the Soyuz during the EVA, to eventually automatically undock the Progress and remove it from that docking port if they needed it in the future. So they’ve got a good plan in place and the crew will begin working on that tomorrow.

“As far as conditions on the Mir, the temperatures and partial pressures of oxygen and CO2 all remain within normal limits. The gyrodynes are still powered up but not being used for attitude at this time, but it should be tomorrow morning first thing and then they will go into the hatch opening process. The crew is doing their exercise. They had most of Sunday off, and of course got up first thing Monday morning, their time, to conduct the docking. And they had part of Saturday off and, in fact, Mike got a little extra time off on the 4th of July in honor of our holiday. So they’re back to a pretty good routing. Mike is conducting some of the research that remains to him in the other modules, though they are beginning to power much of that down in preparation for closing those modules for the EVA.

“The EVA itself has been looked at in Star City in some detail by some experienced cosmonauts led by Sergei Krikolev. We have also had people there-Richard Fullerton, the head of our working group for EVA, and Leroy Chow, an experienced astronaut in EVA, have looked at and observed the Russian process, have a good understanding of what they plan to do, and have reported back to us on how comfortable they are with that. It looks like they will do the EVA no earlier than the 17th or 18th of July. They will at that time, after much rehearsal and preparation by the crew, connect probably around nine cables from the Spektr module through the hatch that they’re going to modify and install on the Spektr module during the EVA and then eventually connect the other end of those cables into the Base Block for generating power into the batteries. Right now their assessment is that they will not be able to have fully capable orienting of the solar arrays in relation to the Sun, so they will not be able to get 100% of the power potentially available from the arrays, and I believe one of the problems is the fact that that damaged array should not be reoriented, and they’re looking at ways to bypass their system and maybe in the future get full pointing of the other arrays. So we don’t expect 100% power recovery initially, but a good bit of it will be available after this EVA, which is being kept very simple, with simple objectives, and it will be very clear to the crew what is required of them.

“To summarize, what we’re seeing is an orderly process that’s in place to evaluate what is required to come up with plans and then the execution of those plans, beginning with the docking of this Progress. And as the crew unloads what’s up there, they’ll have a chance to see firsthand how the hardware is designed and how they’ll be able to install it. It is a process that needs to be done very carefully. We will participate as we can throughout the whole thing because this is a tremendous learning opportunity for what we’re going to be doing in the future on the International Space Station. All the countries involved are watching this very closely. I am sure that we will not be problem-free in either assembly or operations, and the way of doing business here, responding to the problem, reacting and coming up with plans that make sense for the situation you’re in is very valuable to all of us. We’re learning as we go. We’re still taking very seriously the situation onboard and what the capabilities and potential are for continuing operations. But right now I’m very optimistic and I believe Mike is going to have an extremely interesting mission for the remainder of his time up there, and it looks like right now that we will have a good program for Wendy and a lot of good experiences for her ahead as the Russians look at what they might do in the future to recover that Spektr module if possible. They are working on very preliminary plans for that right now.”

Q: “Based on the ongoing analyses, is there any more insight into the condition of the inside of the Spektr and to what might be leaking, if anything, burst experiments, that sort of thing?”

Culbertson: “We’re just about to finish up a process we’ve gone through to evaluate what might be most susceptible to that type of event during an evacuation of the module. I don’t have all the final answers on that. I know what type of experiments might be susceptible, things like vials or even computer screens, but I need some more information from Engineering on what the effects might be. We don’t know any more about the event that was reported last week in terms of the snowflakes that were observed and we have not had a repeat of that experience as best I know. So we need to do a little more analysis and we’ll talk with the Russians in a great deal of detail about what that might be and what they’re concerned about, the hazards that might be present.”

Q: “Based on what you know from the U.S. scientists, what are you most worried about in terms of the various experiments inside?”

Culbertson: “I’m concerned about things like the potential for broken glass to be in there or for any type of material that we would like not to be reintroduced into the pressurized environment such as fixatives. Everything we have is doubly or triply contained depending on what its hazard level is, but we’re still trying to figure out whether that containment will really work during a vacuum, and we’re reevaluating our original safety certification. So we will provide all that information to the Russians and also as we do the review of the EVA itself, which I hope to do within the next week or so, I’ve asked our safety community to come forward with what they see as the hazards and what the controls are to keep them to a minimum or to eliminate them.”

Q: “Do you feel comfortable with the fact that if any of your people saw something that they really thought was unsafe about this spacewalk that NASA would be able to tell the Russians, let’s scrap it, it’s just too dangerous?”

Culbertson: “Absolutely. I am sure the Russians are just as concerned as we are about what’s in there and what the hazards might be and would expect us to come forward with any concerns we have and we have a good working relationship that allows us to do that. There’ll be no question if there are concerns on either side that we’ll be able to bring them to the floor.”

Q: “Could you characterize your current level of confidence in the ability of the cosmonauts to pull off this repair and what, at this stage, are any open questions in your mind?”

Culbertson: “I think once all the equipment is looked at on orbit and the crew has had a chance to rehearse and prepare and get straight in their minds what needs to be done, as well as the mental and physical preparation in terms of rest and all the other elements, I have very high confidence they’ll be able to do this, and in fact Mr. Rumyun reminded me over the weekend that the procedure that they’re doing is something that’s contained in their flight data file, it’s something they’ve done numerous times in the past, and only the details of connecting the cables are the real difference in conducting an EVA in the transfer module. The cable connections by themselves are things that the cosmonauts have done many times on the exterior or the Mir, and it looks like in the training process and evaluation process in the pool, that’s gone relatively smoothly. There are still some concerns about access to a couple of the cables, and that’ll be worked out over the next few days. But I’m optimistic that the crew will not be put in a position that they could not recover from or a position that would present an undue hazard to them. I think it’ll all be well understood and they’ll be very comfortable with it before they go execute this and I think we’ll all be very comfortable with it.”

Q: “Do you have any concerns about possible contamination issues for the arriving shuttle in September and also for the planned EVA? Might you have to perhaps reconsider some of those plans?”

Culbertson: “Yes, we do have contamination concerns, and as I said we’re looking at that very carefully and we will get the questions answered before we conduct the EVA and make sure that we have as thorough an understanding as possible of what those hazards are and how we’re going to deal with them. As the shuttle launch gets closer, we have a process that we already go through to evaluate the environment and with the addition of the potential for other things leaking or if there’s anything coming out of that radiator, we will need to get more information on that before we proceed, but I'm sure that will all happen in time.”

Q: “If, for some reason, the cosmonauts were unable to make the necessary connections and get power restored to some extent, would NASA be comfortable leaving Mike Foale up there under the reduced power situation, or would you then be pushing for the crew to leave?”

Culbertson: “No, I believe that even if they’re not able to conduct this EVA or not able to complete power recovery of some sort, we’re still comfortable with Mike being there now. Unless something happened during the EVA that was unforeseen, I don’t see the situation changing from what it is currently. Mike is in a safe environment, as safe as you can be in space, and we understand that environment, we understand the redundancy that’s there, and I don’t believe we have trouble at all continuing until the shuttle goes up to get him.”

Q: “You mentioned that 100% recovery wasn’t possible, but a great deal would be. Could you give a percentage of what your expecting?”

Culbertson: “Initially it may be as low as 20-30% of full potential, which I believe would be somewhere around 100 Amps plus or minus a little bit. In the future, if they can regain full solar pointing of the arrays themselves, the ones that are available, they can up that considerably, but we shouldn’t be overly optimistic on how much power they’re going to be able to regain, but regaining some of it will be the first step in getting more capability and will help the situation on the Mir in terms of being able to recharge the batteries and keep the charge on them. Another factor is the fact that the batteries that are in the Spektr tended to be the newest ones that were onboard, the ones that held their charge the best, and so we are looking at possibly carrying some extra batteries up on STS-86 to improve that situation and make that more robust.”

Q: “Any idea on how far the cosmonautsare going to have to go in the Spektr to reach these connectors and how difficulty is it going to be for the cosmonaut to actually physically attach the cable in Spektr to the ‘pigtail’ wearing spacesuit gloves?”

Culbertson: “the reports I’ve had indirectly are that it can all be done without tools. The connectors they are asking the cosmonauts to use are designed for EVA. The ones that are not EVA compatible will either have been attached on the ground or will be attached in a pressurized environment. So I believe as far as being able to manipulate them and connect them, that’s all doable within their experience base. As far as how far they’ll go into the Spektr module itself, I don’t have all the details of that yet. I suspect that someone will have to go in almost a full body length just to be able to reach the cables that are around the hatch itself. As we get more details on that and after we conduct our full review of it we’ll give you a full picture of what’s being planned.”

Q: “With the ‘keep it simple’ philosophy, if the cosmonaut does see something float by of interest, a computer hard drive, something like that, would he take it and move it into the node in the hopes that it might be salvaged, or are you not going to try to salvage anything that you might just come across while you’re in Spektr?”

Culbertson: “Their inclination would probably be to salvage whatever was in easy reach if they had time to do that and had completed their prime objective. My hope and my suggestion to the Russian program will be that they make sure the cosmonauts understand exactly what the various items are before they bring them back into the node so they don’t bring back something we don’t want or something we might think hazardous. I would expect them, if they have any question at all about whether this is one of the approved items, that they would just leave it where it is. We have worked on a list that says if you can reach this, if it’s easy, it would be nice to have this back and we certify it safe. That list isn’t complete yet, but it’ll certainly be transmitted to the cosmonauts before they do this, and they’ll have a thorough understanding of the details of each of the items.”

Q: “If Mir was to lose attitude while the EVA was occurring, could Mike take control within Soyuz or use the Soyuz jets to get the complex back under control?”

Culbertson: “Theoretically he could do that, maybe with some call from the ground, with a little guidance, but I’ve been told the preliminary assessment is that even if it went into free drift during this time, that they will maintain adequate power reserves to finish the EVA without having to stay in attitude, but we will confirm that again during the review itself. ”

Q: “If you look at a chain of events--for instance, the core module started to leak its coolant because it was being used for more than twice its design life, which created a lot of contaminated water, not to mention the fire due to the burning of perchlorate; all this water had to be thrown away and arguably you could say that it may have overloaded the Progress, which then caused the accident. You’ve probably looked at a lot of aircraft accident reviews and you’re probably familiar with the fact that a lot of these accidents occur by very innocuous things, small things that build up. How could you be sure that the base module, even though the Russians may be able to certify that it’s not going to split apart, but how can you be sure that certain small things aren’t going to snowball into these major catastrophes?”

Culbertson: “The only way you can be sure you’re not going to have a chain of events that’s going to result in an accident is to have the right people looking at all the links all along the way. Almost every accident occurs because somebody didn’t see something in one of the links that they should have. It’s way too early to speculate on the chain of events that led to this last one, but in terms of the core module and it’s ability to continue operating, people are very sensitized to the fact that there are some leaks and some corrosion in there and we’ve got people on both sides of the ocean looking at the effects of that, looking at the pictures that came back on STS-84, trying to make an estimate of what the remaining life is and how well the fixes are working in sealing up these areas of corrosion. So that’s an area that we have not forgotten and we’re going to continue to look at very carefully. The Mir was originally certified for a five-year life on orbit. That was the conditions they bought it under. The design life was probably quite a bit longer than that and I don’t really know what the designer had in mind when he built it , but I know that it was originally certified for five years with the potential for recertification, which they of course have continued to do through the twelfth year.”

Q: “What fluid is in those radiators, and did it cause any change in the attitude of the Mir?”

Culbertson: “The snowflakes that they saw outside the module did not cause any change in the attitude. It wasn’t like it was jet of liquid or anything. It was just things drifting away. There was ammonia and polymethylsilicone.”

Q: “If they can’t fix the Mir on the spacewalk, will Foale end up coming down with the Russians or will we still go ahead for the September launch?”

Culbertson: “Our plan right now is to continue with the baseline. Even if they were not able to conduct this next internal EVA to connect the power cables, we have not identified any reason for shortening the mission for either the cosmonauts or Mike Foale. If they have difficulty with that, we’ll have to look at what the reasons for that difficulty were and what the next step is, but we feel we have sufficient redundancy to go forward with this with confidence that we could get all the crew off there if necessary if something went wrong. The Soyuz will be available, and of course will be manned by Mike Foale during the EVA.”

Q: “The fixatives you mentioned, are those for fixing biological samples, and what would be the danger posed by those if they were indeed to have escaped. And on the exterior contamination relating to the shuttle, what are your concerns there, what shuttle systems could be affected by whatever material is leaking from Spektr?”

Culbertson: “I don’t have the answer to the external concerns on the shuttle yet. I’ve asked folks to provide that and the shuttle program, of course, is looking at that very carefully and they’ll keep me informed as they get comfortable with what we know. As far as the fixative chemicals, the number one concern is irritation from things like formaldehyde or whatever the fixative might be in this case. You worry about too high a concentration causing other problems, but right now, we’re just now finishing up that whole process of looking at what the potential is and we will provide that information to the Russians as we get firm answers. I don’t want to give them speculation too early.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of July 11, 1997

Dan Goldin Talks to Mike Foale

On Tuesday, July 8, Dan Goldin, NASA Administrator, talked to Mike Foale.

Goldin: Hello Mike. You look terrific. How do you feel?

Foale: Things have been going pretty good here. We’ve just got up and we’re getting ready for a new day to unload the Progress a little bit more and start getting ready for this pretty exciting EVA that Vasily and Sasha are going to do in about a week’s time.

Goldin: Did you get everything you need in the Progress vehicle?

Foale: Yes, I did. I’m really grateful to the guys who really hustled. They did an amazing piece of work in about two weeks to get some pieces together for me and I’m pretty much set up now in the Kvant-2 module, which is where the airlock is for going outside the space station and it joins on to the node of this station complex where the EVA will be done by Vasily and Sasha.

Goldin: Are you getting enough rest, and do you think everyone will be ready for the EVA?

Foale: Yes, I think so. I think the ground understands that we have an awful lot of work to do here and we’re getting through it pretty fast and efficiently I think. And we’ll probably get the extra day or two of grace that is going to be needed.

Goldin: I think it’s important that we know what your own physical constraints are and your living constraints and I’m glad to see that you feel comfortable about that. Are we providing you adequate communication with your family? It must be difficult given the present situation.

Foale: Actually, I’ve been doing just fine with my family. The nice thing about this is that the Russians provide us once a week communications through this air-to-ground loop to our families for about 10 minutes each week, generally on a Sunday or a Saturday. And then we have ham radio as well and that makes it much easier for me especially. I feel a little spoiled compared to my Russian crewmates because I have such clear ham radio communications.

Goldin: That’s great. How do you feel about your safety? Do you feel comfortable, sanguine with it at the present time?

Foale: Oh, I’ve always been sanguine with it. I think we have time to move, even in a pretty extreme situation where we have a leak and the pressure’s falling pretty fast. We had time to consider what we were doing.

This is what was brought up on the Progress that’s going to be used to allow the pass-through of the umbilicals from the Spektr module. This is going to attach onto the end cone of the Spektr. On the inside of the node the connectors you see there will be accessible to us. On the backside there will have already have been stuck some cables--like a kind of Medusa of cables--and then during the EVA Vasily and Sasha will connect these cables to the power cables that are now floating free in Spektr, which will provide the means to get the power from Spektr to the Base block. Generally, the basic concerns here are well met and I’m not worried.

Goldin: I tell you, my hat’s off to our Russian colleagues. That’s one incredible piece of hardware to put together in days. I wish we had the rapid reaction time in the United States that I see sitting in your hand there. We have a lot to learn from the Russians.

Foale: I agree with you. I am particularly impressed by this. The plan has come together. Sergei Krikolev was asking us questions even about a day or two after the accident and I had to ask him, ‘What are you inventing?’ I could tell that something was going on. And this is what they invented. And I must say, the plan’s looking like it’s coming together. We had a lot of questions--there still are questions--about how to do the EVA, where I’ll be during it in the Soyuz, and what we’ll do, but I think those questions are being answered.

Goldin: Well, I tell you. I think this is a very valuable experience and I salute your courage, and Vasily and Alexander, because this could cover a contingency situation which could occur on the International Space Station, and learning how to work through this I think is very important, and sticking with the mission is very important.

Foale: I agree with you entirely on that. I think the biggest lesson I’m getting out of this is how do we respond to a situation, and this situation isn’t going to be a one-off occurrence. We’re going to have events like this, I think, in the future in our combined space programs. And the way we’re learning to work together, the way we’re understanding how people respond to these emergencies, is very, very useful.

Goldin: You know, we’re getting down on the surface of Mars and I don’t think you've had the privilege of seeing some of the incredible pictures. Michael, train, because you’re still young enough to go to Mars.

Foale: Boy, I’d love to hear that. We have been really thrilled to hear about the Mars landing. I must say I think we’re some of the few people from Earth who have not seen those pictures yet. We want to very much and I’ve only been thinking about what’s going on on Mars, that fantastic lander, Pathfinder. When we’re flying over northern Africa, it’s a red sand now. There are almost no clouds present, and of course there’s a little bit of a blue tint to the horizon, but it makes me think about what it would be like to be in orbit around Mars and I do think we should be doing that pretty soon.

Goldin: We got wonderful briefings today from the brilliant young people here at the JSC and I challenged them to get us to Mars for a very, very low price in a short period of time and do outstanding work, and I tell you, we’re going to pull it off and I think we’re going to do it in your career time.

Foale: Well, I can believe that because I’m so impressed by the way the Pathfinder mission has gone off. I think the way that was done, for so much less money than in the past and done so quickly was really, really impressive.

Goldin: You should see the excitement of the young engineers and the mature young engineers at the JPL. They are just on fire. I’ve been watching them on TV. I’m so proud of them. I tell you, I’m so proud of the whole NASA team. You folks in space, our Russian colleagues and the people here on the ground. And I’ll try my best to get some pictures up to you and Vasily and Alexander as soon as humanly possible because I’d like you to share the excitement with us.

Foale: Thank you very much. We’d appreciate that. And I’d like to offer my congratulations to the JPL team and the NASA team that have pulled all this stuff off. And I’d like to thank everybody, in particular for the incredible response in our own present moment. I found the response instantaneous and helpful. There was never any feeling that communication was down or lacking and I’m very grateful for the NASA team and for the Russian team for what they’ve done.

Goldin: Michael, we think you’re terrific. We think Vasily and Alexander are terrific. There are a lot of people on the ground that read about you and see you on TV day and night. Our thoughts are with you, and play it safe. By the way, the Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair, wants to speak to you. We’re scheduling a phone conversation with you.

Foale: Well, I’ll be very privileged to do that and I look forward to that. I hope it comes off.

Goldin: Good luck. We’ll follow you Michael.

Foale: Thank you.

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Mir-23 - Week of July 11, 1997

Columbia and Mir Ham Radio Linkup

On Tuesday, July 8, the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia were able to talk to Mike Foale via a ham radio linkup.

Janice Voss: Mike, this is Janice on Columbia. How do you copy?
Mike Foale: Hey, you're loud and clear Janice. This is Mike Foale on Space Station Mir. What we're doing right now is I'm enjoying the first cup of tea I've had in about two months because we just unpacked the Progress vehicle. Not all of it, but just parts of it. And we're just strewing baggage and EVA pieces and food and air and water all over the place here.
Voss: We just about ran out of all of our fresh food. So we're hurting for fresh food. Glad to hear you've got some.
Foale: Well, actually Janice, we're not sure we have got fresh food. When we opened up the hatch, there was this wonderful smell of fresh air, and it smelled like apples, but as we've been unpacking it, we haven't found the fruit yet, so maybe it's in the very bottom.
Voss: We actually have some Russian food I brought here Mike. They've added some of the Russian food from the Mir program onto the menu and I've got some corn here. It's even got Russian on it. And when they translated the weight, they translated into milliliters , so we have to do some conversion here to get it to work on the galley.
Foale: Well, you can tell we're moving into an international world because my tea with cream here is the pure American brand and it only comes in ounces, and of course we only use milliliters here and I was trying to figure out how many milliliters to make this tea with.
Voss: We were also wondering, Mike, if you've had a chance to see Hale-Bopp. We've been looking for it and it's been too close to the Sun, we haven't been able to find it. Have you seen it in the last couple of days?
Foale: No. We have not seen it for a while. Sasha and Vasily said it was really great about a month ago. Actually, I've just got done with running and I've been looking at the galaxy at Sagittarius and I see where the big dust clouds are. And Jupiter's just above it. I must say it's a pretty wonderful thing to look at the galaxy from space. I hope you guys are having time to look out the window.
Jim Halsell: Yeah, Mike, this is Jim Halsell again. I got to talk to you a little bit a couple of days ago when we had the SAREX contact. Yeah, I've got some amateur astronomers onboard. They're pointing out Venus, and Mercury, along with the crescent moon going down right at sunset. Then we also see Jupiter and I think we're going to see or we have seen Saturn also, so we're getting to see all that stuff.
Foale: I must say I'm turning into a little bit of a star guy myself. I'm hoping to find a star chart in this Progress, but we still haven't got to all the stuff. I've just been enjoying the letters and various special things that my friends back home have sent and a bunch of other people at work. I haven't seen a picture from Mars yet. None of us on this spacecraft has seen a picture from Mars. And I'm sure you have.
Mike Gernhardt: Hey Mike. It's Mike Gernhardt here. How you doing buddy?
Foale: Mike, we've been doing just fine. As I say, we've been unpacking the Progress. I was wondering if you've been seeing these pictures from the Pathfinder mission on Mars.
Gernhardt: Yeah, Mike. Mission Control's done an excellent job of keeping us posted. They sent us up within probably a half hour of the landing the still photos, black and white photos, and then later that day they sent us up a video file in color. And it showed the lander with the airbags and the rover and it's really awesome to look at the landscape. It looks a lot like what you'd think it would from the old Viking photos.
Foale: Sasha just came by and heard all that. I want Sasha to say hello to you all, so here's Sasha.
Sasha Lazutkin: Hello crew of Columbia. We say hello from our crew.
Jim Halsell: Mike, to you and both your comrades, we want to wish you the very best. We've been following your progress and our thoughts have been with you as you've dealt with the problems that you had to deal with. You've done just an outstanding job. We would appreciate it if you would pass onto your crewmates just how magnificent we think they're doing up there and we all look forward to your return and their return later on here to Earth.
Foale: Thanks very much for those nice words. We'd like to invite you to Space Station Mir. We have tea. We have coffee. We have chocolates. Candy. In fact we have everything here on Space Station Mir that you might want.
Halsell: OK. I know that the Progress vessel just docked and I know it's kind of like Christmas. Yuri and Sergei told me when I had the opportunity to dock with them on 74, they said it was almost like Christmas when the Progress vehicle docked and you had a chance to open up all the things that were being provided to you. Is that the atmosphere that you have right now? Is it like Christmas right now with the Progress vessel just docked and you guys opening all the supplies.
Foale: Yes. You've guessed absolutely right. This morning we finally opened up the hatch - of course, we had a sit there with the Progress stuck for about a day because we were charging our batteries -- so we're having a good time. It is just like Christmas for us. And in fact Sasha just told me Christmas is just beginning. So I take that to mean that it's going to get better. What I'd like to know is where are you right now over Earth.
Halsell: We just passed over Panama. We're headed southeast and currently we're over Columbia.
Foale: OK. So we're about 1000 miles I guess to the east of you, probably paralling your track because you're in a descending mode. Is that correct?
Halsell: Yes, that's correct. What's your current position? You're over the United States? Is that correct.
Foale: Just about over Florida at the moment.
Halsell: Do you have a window that you can look out of as you're going by?
Foale: Lake Okeechobee. I have to get to the window in Sasha's cabin to see what's out there. But yes, that's Florida down there.
Halsell: We had three great passes over Florida earlier today and it's always fun to look down at the cape. Are you happy with what came up on the vehicle in terms of replenishing what you had to leave behind in the Spektr when you had to close it up in a hurry.
Foale: Yes.and in fact I'm particularly indebted to Ken Bowersox and the flight support guys who worked really hard to get some extra stuff onboard the Progress. It's quite a treat to find all that stuff and, of course, there's things I sort of knew were going to be there anyway from my wife and my friends. That's also a big treat to find. But one of the nicest things that I think I've got here is a new video player. We lost that in the Spektr. We'd watch videos in the evening, on the weekends, or if we had free time. We watched a lot of American movies and I'd always be the translator. So practice at Russian translation kind of went away when we lost the Spektr module access.
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Mir-23 - Week of July 18, 1997

Press Briefing - Frank Culbertson

On Thursday, July 17, Frank Culbertson, NASA Program Manager of the Shuttle-Mir Program, gave a status update and answered questions from the press.

Culbertson: “Our original intent today was to brief you on the plans for the upcoming EVA, which, of course, we now expect would include Mike Foale, along with flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin. This was an EVA designed to recover some power from the Spektr module, which was damaged in the recent collision. However, overnight last night we received reports that, due to an inadvertent disconnect of a cable between the Omega attitude control system and the main computer in the Core module of the Mir, the Mir went into free drift and then the power, which, as you know, has limited margins right now, was reduced to the point where they had to shut down the gyrodynes, go into jet control, and then eventually had to go back to controlling with the Soyuz module as they did about three weeks ago when a similar event happened. So this is pretty much a replay of what we saw at that time when they got very low on power, had to methodically bring the station back into the proper attitude for maximizing sunlight on the arrays, building the charge in the batteries, regaining their margins, spinning the gyrodynes back up, and getting back on nominal gyrodyne control. This whole process takes about two to three days. We expect that to be true in this case, and in the meantime the crew is still safe and in good condition, but operating in the dark to a large extent because they are minimizing the load on the batteries and the solar arrays. They have also shut down the Elektron and the Vozdukh systems. The Elektron actually was not being run very much at this time because the Progress had just come aboard with additional oxygen for the crew so the partial pressure of oxygen was very comfortable. CO2 is being removed from the atmosphere by the lithium hydroxide canisters that are onboard for that purpose, and they run a fan to route the air through the can and that keeps the partial pressure of CO2 well within our normal limits. Temperatures are running pretty close to normal right now and I’m sure that thermal control will be one of the first things they regain as they bring the power back up and start putting the systems back on line.

“The Russian flight Control Center doesn’t have a lot of information right now on the exact state of the Mir because they don’t have telemetry at this time. When they start getting coverage by Russian ground stations in about half an hour, they’ll start gathering more data and be able to help the crew a little bit more specifically on attitude as well as load balancing between the solar arrays and the batteries. In the meantime they’ve been talking to them through U.S. ground stations. We’ve been using Dryden, White Sands, and Wallops stations as we have in the past, and those folks have been very responsive and we’ve gotten very good communications by that means and the Russians have been very appreciative of that.

“As far as the plans for the EVA, I had intended to go over that in some detail and I’ll continue to do that; however, we are not sure what the schedule will be at this time. Because of the problem last night, ,the crew was given some time to work this problem and some rest today because they were up much of the night, and they’ll probably be given rest tomorrow, so this puts them a day or two behind on the training plan and to prepare for this EVA, which was scheduled for the 24th of July, so I suspect it will not be conducted on that date, and in a day or two the Russians will make a decision on how much it will be delyaed. I suspect the final decision won’t come until all the power is recovered and the gyrodynes are back in control and they have a chance to assess the overall situation and what time remains prior to the next Soyuz launch, which right now is scheduled for August 5th. The EVA itself was planned to be done internally to the transfer node with the replacement of the hatch on the Spektr module with the modified hatch. Originally they had planned on using the commander, Vasily Tsibliev, and the flight engineer, Aleksandr Lazutkin, to conduct this EVA, with Mike Foale located in the Soyuz module during this time communicating with the crew by radio and being there in case a contingency arose and they all needed to evacuate the station.

“Subsequently to that original plan during normal medical tests in preparing for this EVA, they discovered an irregular heartbeat on the commander and decided it would be wiser to not have him do this EVA and asked us if we would mind if Mike Foale conducted it. Mike, of course, has been trained as an EVA crewmember on both the shuttle and the Mir. He was Jerry Linenger’s back-up for his mission and could have conducted the EVA on that mission if called upon. He has received a good deal of training in Star City. They have reviewed his training records and he performed very well there. He also conducted an EVA on the shuttle in 1995, so he’s a well-experienced crewmember and really just needs some review. And if you think about it, training on orbit in a suit is even better than training in the water tank because you are weightless, you’ve got the actual equipment, and it would be the best training session you could ask for in preparing for it. That’s one of the things about a station, you do have that luxury of going through a full dress rehearsal before you actually conduct an EVA of this sort. We don’t have that luxury on the shuttle because we generally have shorter missions and less resources to do that.

“At any rate, we have thoroughly evaluated that. We took some time to make sure that we addressed all the concerns for both the training itself and the conduct of the EVA. Right now we have given a go to the Russians for Mike beginning the training, which consists of a rehearsal without the suits--going through the motions, using the equipment, and going to the places where they need to operate in the node, simulating the hatch maneuvers, etc.--and also a fully suited rehearsal with the suits closed and pressurized, but with the node still pressurized and not evacuated as it would be during the EVA. The final decision on the EVA for all crewmembers will be made at a joint readiness review that we will conduct together with the Russians by video about two days before the EVA would be executed. That would be after all the rehearsals and we have all the data on hazard analysis and any other concerns people might have about our readiness to do that. We have not given them a go for conducting the EVA, but, of course, they haven’t given their own crew the go for that, but we have given the go for preparations and training.

“To go into a little bit of detail on how the EVA will be conducted, the diagram shows the Spektr module on the right, the transfer node right in the center (yellow), which is where the actual equivalent of an airlock will be located for the crew. They will go into the transfer node fully suited, close all the hatches that surround it, and then evacuate that transfer node just as they would an airlock, and then they can open the hatch to the Spektr module and both will be at the same pressure, near zero. The Soyuz module would have the commander aboard in the descent portion, which is the center part, and the crew could have access--though the hatch would be closed it would not be latched-they would have access to the habitation module, which, if necessary, they could use as a subsequent airlock if they had trouble repressurizing the node. The Base Block is off to the left and there is a Progress docked here at this time, which has now been emptied and is ready to undock also if necessary if they need to clear that docking port. So, essentially, they would come from the Base Block after suiting up into the transfer node, close all the hatches, evacuate the node, and then begin the EVA.

“This is an interior view of the transfer node itself. The hatch that they are modifying is the one that Valeri Korzun is actually holding in his hand there. The bottom portion of it will have been removed and replaced by the hermetic plate, as they call it, that contains the connectors that will be used for transferring power from the Spektr to the Base Block itself, and that will be all modified and finished in a shirt-sleeved environment and will be ready for installation once they go EVA.

“The Spektr hatch itself is in the center of the picture. This picture was taken during normal operations when they did have cables running through the hatch, and the larger cables are the ones that were disconnected and moved out of the way when they closed the hatch to isolate the leak that occurred during the collision. That’s John Blaha inside the Spektr module to give you a little bit of scale and the internal hatch on the Spektr is the dome-shaped object. This is open right now and tied back with a bungy. There are some cables that are behind that hatch that they’ll need to gain access to if they want to fully connect all the solar arrays. And probably the most difficult part of it is reach the cables back there. The hatch that is sealing it is actually a plate that can be removed totally, and seals against the surface that can be seen in the foreground. It’s a plain hatch at this point, and it’ll be replaced with the modified hatch during the EVA.

“Here’s a little bit closer view looking through the hatch of the Spektr. You can see again this internal Spektr hatch out of the way and the cables that come through, and then you can see also how the Spektr kind of necks down as you get further into it, so they really don’t intend to go very far into the Spektr itself. In fact, the primary intent is to go just barely inside the hatch if possible, locate the cables, connect them, and then when they finish that, they’ll probably do some looking around, both during daylight and during night to see if they see any evidence of where the leak might be in the bulkhead. But they’re not very confident they’re going to be able to locate anything without going pretty far into the module. This crew would not do that. The next crew coming up is conducting some training now to see if they can go very far in to do a more thorough search and maybe a repair in the future.

“This is a view looking from inside the Spektr back into the transfer node, which is in the shadow. On the left is the hatch I mentioned earlier and you can see how some of the cables run behind it and back in underneath, and the cables that they have to get to are located on plates such as you see in the picture that they’ll have to gain access to and then connect to the hatch itself. The modified hatch is basically the dome-shaped hatch in the earlier picture with the modified connector plate attached to it, but also with jumpers coming off the plate that will make it easier for them to connect the internal connectors and cables, so they won’t have to reach down inside the plate itself.

“This picture gives an idea of what it’ll look like as they perform the EVA. This is a shot taken from the Hydrolab in Star City where they conduct their EVA training underwater. You can see here one of the cosmonauts entering a representative hatch that is just about the same size as the Spektr and you can see the clearance is somewhat limited although he can get through there.

“In this picture you can see he has entered and is able to enter with clearance. The suits they’re using will be attached to the transfer node with umbilicals so Mike Foale’s primary job will be to watch Aleksandr Lazutkin who will be in this position during most of the EVA and Mike will help tend his umbilical, watch for clearance for him, and help clear snags if necessary, and of course monitor the systems associated with the EVA in the transfer node and help operate the depressurization and repressurization controls. So Mike will be basically a back-up to him and Lazutkin will be the prime for going in and working with the connectors and doing the actual work inside the Spektr module. Their initial estimate is that the picture here is about as far as he’ll have to go to get the job done. If he can’t quite get to some of the connectors, he may have to reverse direction and go in feet first and in that case he would be further in, but they’re hoping he doesn’t have to do that, and of course, in that case, he would have eye contact with Mike and they could communicate over what needed to be done even if the radios were to fail.

“So that’s a brief run through of the physical layout of what they’ll be doing. We’ll have better pictures after we do the joint review and reach a decision on whether to go with it or not and we’ll try to give a more thorough explanation of the route they will take, etc. Basically during this time the two crew members will be in the evacuated node, the commander will be in the Soyuz in radio communication with them and standing by until they finish, and then they can reopen the hatches and hopefully regain some power and increase the margins. If they had had that power last night during this problem, we may not have been in the same position of having to power down the gyrodynes and go through the whole process once again of power up.

“I probably haven’t covered everything, so I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have and let you know where we think we are and where we’re going.”

Q: “Would you discuss the risk-benefit of this spacewalk with Mike Foale? Is this really worth doing, and what do you think you’ll gain in terms of electrical power?”

Culbertson: “Potentially they could regain about 300 Amps of power. It could be as high as 2 to 2.5 kilowatts of power, which will put them back in a pretty good condition. Right now they’re generating about 4 to 4.5 kilowatts on average, I believe. But they do need the power margin in order to be able to have some flexibility to get out of attitude if they need to do a docking or, if they were to have some other problem with the attitude control system, they’d need some margin in the batteries. They can, at this point, if they regain that power, repower the Krystall module and also the Priroda, which is where the remainder of our experiments are located. Krystall contains the attitude control computer that they’re using right now, as well as some other equipment that they would like to have powered up and also there are batteries in those modules that could be repowered if they were to regain the solar arrays. So there is some risk, but the risk, we believe, is minimal, as far as an EVA goes. In fact, if you think about it, doing an EVA inside takes away one of the risks, which is becoming untethered, and you don’t really worry about that. They are following a procedure that they have followed several times in the past. It’s an already published flight data file for them. The only change to it is the actual connection of the cables because they used this EVA to reconfigure and move around hatches whenever a new module comes up and they’ve had to move them from one place to the other. So it’s been done several times in the past. ”

Q: “Could you discuss what the Mir crew was doing when the cable became disconnected?”

Culbertson: “As I understand it, they were looking at the connections and disconnections they were going to have to make during the upcoming EVA and probably looking at the location of the cables and maybe practicing, seeing how much torque it took to disconnect or reconnect them, and it appears that they inadvertently disconnected the wrong cable. It happened when they were not talking to the ground, I believe, so I don’t know the details of exactly who did it or what they were attempting to do at the time, but I know leading up to that they were having some discussions about what they would do with the cables during the preparation for the EVA itself, because they will have to disconnect cables between all the modules.”

Q: “How did disconnecting one cable throw the Mir into such turmoil?”

Culbertson: “It’s a good question and one that we’re looking at very closely too. I believe what happened, based on what I know, is that when this one cable was disconnected the computer got a signal it had not seen before and not been programmed for so it just basically shut down all operation, all control of the attitude. Normally they would go to a back-up system, but because this was an unexpected type of failure, I believe it did not immediately kick in. It takes some time for the gyros and the back-up Ort computer, as we saw a few weeks ago, to come up to speed and regain attitude control. By the time it did take over attitude control, it appears that it had about a 45° error in its inertial reference plane and so they were not in an optimal pointing attitude for the solar arrays at that time. Without data to the ground, the ground has minimal ability to tell them exactly what attitude to go to optimize the pointing of the arrays. There are a lot of them and if they’re not pointed very well, they can shadow each other and you can end up with one shadowing another and reducing the power. So it’s critical that it be pointed in the right direction. When that attitude was off, they went to further back-up, which is a magnetic sensing reference, but that takes a couple of orbits to stabilize and my understanding is that when that had stabilized and began to give them some good information, the power had dropped to the point in the batteries that they could no longer keep the gyrodynes on line and eventually they had to shut off the main computer and a lot of the other life-support equipment. So they had to go to the Soyuz at that point, using it again to begin pointing manually and start regaining power, but keep the load really down.”

Q: “What role does crew fatigue play in this?”

Culbertson: “We don’t know for sure. It could be a factor. That’s something that I know that the Russians are looking at very carefully and we’re evaluating ourselves. We look at this all the time in spaceflight. You want to make sure the crew is ready to do what they’re asked to do.”

Q: “Are you concerned that if you don’t do this cable repair the lack of power will jeopardize docking in August?”

Culbertson: “I believe that they can safely conduct the docking in August with the current power levels, but it takes away some of their margin if they had to delay for an orbit or, if the Sun angle were such at that point in the year that they had minimal coverage of the arrays, it would give them less time when they could stay in an optimum attitude. So it takes away some of your flexibility in a situation like that. Or if you had to back out and try it again or something like that, it would reduce those options. Back to your previous question, as far as crew fatigue specifically playing into this one, I’m not aware of an overly strenuous day for the crew leading up to this. They had had a fairly nominal schedule and had been doing some review of the timeline for the EVA and had not been involved in some of the past heavy maintenance activities that they have been conducting, so maybe in an overall sense it’s been a tough mission for them and that may have played into it, but that particular day I don’t believe was very stressful.”

Q: “Why not wait for a fresh Russian crew who has rehearsed this on the ground? I’m not sure I understand the urgency of dealing with this issue with this crew that’s had so many difficulties.”

Culbertson: “That’s certainly an option, and one that has been open all along and one that we’ve been looking at. We’ve had some discussions with the Russians about that, specifically when they requested that Mike do this. I’ve been told that they would like to regain the power as soon as possible just because of this margin issue of having enough flexibility to deal with problems or to give yourself some other options. But also they were hoping that if there were a problem with this EVA or something else cropped up they might be able to identify it before the next crew came up and bring up additional equipment if that was what was needed to solve the problem. So it just keeps some of their options open on both power generation as well as logistics to support subsequent EVAs.”

Q: “Did you or any other top NASA officials have talked directly to Mike Foale about substituting for Tsibliev for the spacewalk and what did he say? Do you think he might be feeling pressured into saying yes whether he wants to or not, and what’s his wife been saying about this and is she being kept abreast?”

Culbertson: “She is being kept very well informed of it and as far as I can tell she’s very comfortable with the idea. Mike has done an EVA before and she’s very confident in his abilities, as are we. I talked to Mike almost immediately after the proposal was raised to us and I guess ‘enthusiastic’ would be a good description of how Mike felt. He had told me before the flight that he sort of wished he were scheduled for an EVA. Almost every astronaut enjoys doing that because it is a challenge and it’s a great view and also a demonstration of doing in space what we’re there to do, which is human activity in the vacuum. So Mike didn’t have any problem with this. He did want some time to review the procedures and understand what he would be required to do and the Russians were certainly willing to grant more than sufficient time for that, so he felt very comfortable with the plan. He also felt like Tsibliev would be an excellent instructor for him. He has a lot of confidence in his ability both as an EVA crewmember and as a teacher of what needs to be done, and he felt that between the two of them he could become very well prepared for it.”

Q: “Given today’s problems, how does NASA in good conscience even think about sending Wendy Lawrence or any other American to Mir at this point? Certainly this puts a whole new slant on things.”

Culbertson: “I don’t believe this particular event changes the way we’re looking at things at all. This is an event that they’ve dealt with before. We are concerned about it, of course, but we have not actually begun the review process for Wendy’s readiness for flight, nor the advisability of beginning that mission. We will do that starting in August and the final decision would not be made until probably the first week in September at the flight readiness reviews for STS-86.”

Q: “President Clinton said today that he didn’t have enough information or hadn’t been given enough information about Wendy Lawrence’s mission, further Americans going to Mir. What additional information does NASA need? Are you still collecting information on this, and when can you make some decision about whether she should go or whether any American should go to Mir?”

Culbertson: “I think it would be irresponsible to make a decision now on something that needs to be done two months from now. We could say ‘go’ now and things could get worse or we could say ‘don’t’ go now and things could improve. I think we need to see how things are as we get close to the scheduled time for that mission, our readiness for it and the ability of the Mir to support our program and people safely, and we will do that in time. It would be premature to make a decision now and that’s basically what Mr. Clinton said.”

Q: “Can Mir in its current state handle six cosmonauts, astronauts? In other words, when the crew gets up there August 5th, if you didn’t do this EVA, if you didn’t restore that power, can the life-support systems support that many people?”

Culbertson: “I’m skeptical that it could at this point. The Russians have said that they think they could, but they are not willing to make that decision until after the EVA to see how much power they do regain. I believe this is something we need to look at very carefully and discuss with them just how much time you could afford to have six people up there and whether it’s the right thing to do at this point or not.”

Q: “It appeared that they accidentally unplugged the wrong cable. There were some conflicting reports this morning that perhaps they were following instructions from the ground that were in error. Do you have any clarification of that or do you think it’s just they onboard the ship made the mistake?”

Culbertson: “I really don’t know. Either scenario could be accurate and we don’t have much insight into that yet. I haven’t seen the actual instructions that they were following, if any. They may have been doing this on their own, but we’re still trying to figure that out.”

Q: “Can you describe some of the scenarios that you are looking, realizing that these are moving targets and nothing’s written in stone, but looking ahead, the Russians are testing sealants. They think they can perhaps down the road repressurize Spektr. Could you discuss what some of those long-range plans are and what might be done on STS-86 in terms of the EVA that already planned? Is there any way to get Titov and Parazinsky up on Spektr to look around? Is that an option?”

Culbertson: “We have been looking at a lot of those options and a lot of our people that aren’t involved in the day-to-day operations are busy looking down the road at what can be done. The Russians have asked us for our own ideas and if we know of any materials that can be used in this way, and we have provided them what information we have. They’re looking at several different ways they might repair a potential leak, but the problem is they don’t know exactly what it looks like or where it’s located. So until we know the exact character and location of the hole, it’s difficult to build a specific repair procedure. So I believe that looking at the area, if they’re going to do a repair, is critical. We are looking to see if there’s anything we can do during STS-86 in terms of a fly-around, photographic survey, or other sensors to see if we can help them locate it. We have talked about the possibility of modifying the EVA during STS-86, but right now, because of the short amount of time available and the limited training facilities available, it’s doubtful we would do very much beyond just look across from one spacecraft to the other and see what can be seen. If we come up with a way that they could do an on-site inspection, we’ll look at it very closely, but right now that looks pretty difficult given the configuration of the Mir and the training time available.”

Q: “Some space analysts are saying that it’s a conflict of interest for you to be deciding such matters when you’ve been promised, at least unofficially, the last Shuttle-Mir flight. How do you respond to these kind of concerns?”

Culbertson: “I don’t really think about that. I haven’t been assigned to any mission and my main concern is the safety of the crew on orbit and the safe conduct of the program. Any future missions is not an issue whatsoever with me. If there are missions to Mir available and I’m relieved from this job, I’d be happy to take it if I were assigned, but there’ll be other missions beyond that, and as long as I can stay healthy and stay on flight status I’ll be available for them if they’d like me to go do them. But STS-91 is not an issue to me. Right now I’m concerned about the current mission.”

Q: “How much more in the way of problems are you and others at NASA, at the decision-making level, willing to tolerate on Mir before standing up and saying, ‘Well, enough’s enough. It's time to stop sending Americans to Mir. ’ In addition, how can this possibly be good use of the taxpayers’ money at this point?”

Culbertson: “As far as our review process for the current mission and the future missions, we do have a process that we’re going through and we are looking at and maintaining awareness of what the situation on the Mir is in terms of consumables, life-support systems, repair capability, and, of course, just the living conditions and safety of the crew, and we do that on an ongoing basis and we do it specifically for the missions that are coming up in a very detailed fashion, and we’ll continue to do that. If future problems arise then they will be factored in and dealt with accordingly, just like we do on any spaceflight whether it’s to a Russian spacecraft or on an American spacecraft. And as far as this being a good use of the taxpayers’ money, there’s no doubt in my mind this is a good use of taxpayers’ money. It we’re going to be a spacefaring nation and continue to operate in space, it’s important that we learn everything we can about what it takes to operate in space and these are very graphic lessons of what it takes and some of the risks are being highlighted for us, but I think that we will be able to operate safer in the future because of it and as long as we can maintain our minimum safety margins and be aware of what’s happening up there, I think that we’re getting extremely valuable benefit from being in space. But there’s no doubt that this is a situation that we need to watch very carefully and that’s what we’'re doing. So it’s good training for the managers and flight controllers and everybody else on the ground too.”

Q: “Do we understand, then, that you feel that it’s important enough to gain this experience and therefore you’re trying to sending Americans up there. There’s no cut-off point where you say ’Well, now that’s too much for us to take and put Americans at risk’?”

Culbertson: “There would be a cut-off point that there’s too much, but I can’t identify that right now.”

Q: “What was the extent of power loss that resulted from this disconnected cable? Some have called it a complete loss of power and I was wondering if that was accurate.”

Culbertson: “The disconnection of the cable did not cause any power to be lost. It was a data problem that caused the computer to drop off line and cease its normal function of controlling the Mir and its solar arrays. The power loss came gradually over time as the batteries drained and didn’t have sufficient recharge from the solar arrays because they weren’t pointed in the right direction.”

Q: “Were the batteries completely drained?”

Culbertson: “No, not all the batteries were completely drained, but the ones in the core module got below their minimum for staying on line and the automatic systems, at a certain point, when they get below a certain voltage, do cause them to drop off and that’s what they reached. ”

Q: “At what point did the crew actually get into the Soyuz? Did all three of them get into the Soyuz and if so, how long were they in there, and are they back out working in the dark? Essentially are you back to square one from right after the crash?”

Culbertson: “They’re pretty close to that situation right now, that’s right. They have powered off a lot of the lights and other equipment just to reduce the load on the electrical generation system. They probably are using flashlights. They did not all get into the Soyuz I don’t believe. They got into the Soyuz when they needed to talk to the ground, so it probably only took one or two to do that, and then of course the commander go into the Soyuz to maneuver the whole stack to get it pointed back toward the Sun. I believe there was some misinformation floating around. They did not evacuate the station or get into the Soyuz in mass. They had to get into there just to conduct some of the operations. And they’ve been alternating between Soyuz communication and Base Block communication since that time.”

Q: “What is the propellant situation on the Soyuz? How much was used in this maneuver? Are they close to the red line that they might need if they had to make an emergency evacuation?”

Culbertson: “I was told this morning that they have about 495 kilograms of fuel onboard the Soyuz. They need about 200 kilograms for a deorbit, so they’ve got plenty onboard. They were saving some for a possible flyaround of the Soyuz from one end to the other just because they preserve that option throughout the mission if possible. They have canceled any plans to do that, so that opened up another 200 kilograms, so they have lots of margin for conducting maneuvers with the Soyuz and I don’t believe that should be a limiting factor here at all. They only use about 15 to 20 kilograms per maneuver.”

Q: “Do you know yet or have further information on what caused the collision with the Progress? Was the capsule overloaded?”

Culbertson: “We don’t have any more information on that yet and we don’t expect a final report until after the crew lands and they are a part of the interview process and part of the investigation.”

Q: “Do you derive any sort of encouragement in sort of a backhanded way from the fact that what happened overnight was human error rather than yet another thing breaking? Is that something that allows you to say ‘Let’s keep going with this, ’ and not to get as discouraged as you otherwise might?”

Culbertson: “I think it’s important to keep all of it in perspective. Human error is one thing and systems problems are another and you just deal with them as they occur and try to keep it all balanced and make sure that you understand the whole picture, so I wouldn’t isolate one from the other. I think we need to continue to look at the Mir as a system, including all of its ground controllers and crew that happens to be onboard at the time.”

Q: “If there is any setbacks in the attempt to restore Mir to how it was before the cable disconnect triggered all the related problems, how long could they stay in their current configuration and what would be the limiting consumable that would force things to deteriorate rather than regain ground?”

Culbertson: “If they had no way of regaining power whatsoever, then they would be in pretty sad shape, but right now the power’s continuing to slowly build up in the accumulators and in the batteries and it’s just a matter of time to get up to the point where they can restart the gyrodynes and bring the life-support systems back on line. If you’re talking about many, many days in this situation, the limiting factor would probably be lithium hydroxide for CO2 removal, but they’ve got 25 days’ worth of that onboard and I don’t believe it’ll take anywhere near that. In fact the Soyuz’ll be there before that, to regain attitude control.”

Q: “When does the station itself need to take over attitude control? When can Soyuz no longer be safely used to control positioning?”

Culbertson: “The Soyuz has almost 300 kilograms of fuel available for positioning and I believe it can used as long as that fuel is available, if necessary. They’re not continuously firing the Soyuz jets. What they’ve done, basically, is set up a rotation rate with the Soyuz so that they can tend to point toward the Sun in inertial attitude as they go around the Earth, which takes some rotation in relation to the Earth, of course, and they tweak that every once in a while as they come into sunrise to try to optimize the pointing as well as the rotation rate. But it doesn’t need to be done very often once they set it up if it’s done skillfully.”

Q: “Because they lost power so quickly, is it really that they’re hanging on a thread as far as power’s concerned, that the batteries are just topping themselves up during the daylight pass and really only have enough just to make it through the night portion of the orbit?”

Culbertson: “No, actually, I think this took about five orbits. And I believe it was partly due to the fact that they happened to be in a regime where they were not getting telemetry to the ground, they were relying only on voice through our ground stations between the Mir crew and the SOUP and I believe that the backup systems were just a little slow coming on line and in hindsight maybe they could have been a little more aggressive about some things. That’ll come out as we have further discussions. Or maybe it was just an artifact of the fact that it happened during the crew’s sleep period and they just needed to get things going. It just deteriorated over time, but it did take several orbits for that to happen.”

Q: “There have been several reports out of Moscow that tension is running quite high in the Mission Control Center that some people may have been snapping at each other there. Have you been able to gauge how everyone has dealt with this and whether there’s a sense of frustration that it seems you’ve taken one step forward and two steps back?”

Culbertson: “Nobody’s snapped at me, but I can imagine that they are nervous over there and probably frustrated because they’ve been working very hard to bring the Mir up a fairly high standard. In fact, if you think back to before the collision, the Mir was as capable, in fact more capable, than it had ever been on orbit in terms of redundancy power generation capability and productivity in the research area. They had worked very hard to overcome their systems difficulties and had a great plan in place to increase their redundancy. So, yes, this has been very frustrating to the folks who have worked to reach this point and one more problem on top of that, which you probably wouldn’t have even noticed if we didn’t have all these other problems here, just probably adds to their frustration. I don’t blame them at all. These are human beings.”

Q: “Have you managed to complete your studies into the possible indeterminants that might be lurking behind the door of Spektr and also what kind of evaluations you’ve done, whether you’ve put some of these objects, such as the fixative containers, in a vacuum chamber and seen what kind of results you get when you evacuate the chamber?”

Culbertson: “As a matter of fact, we have. We are not quite through with all the analysis, but so far we haven’t identified anything that would be a specific hazard to the crew. We have put some things in vacuum chambers such as batteries and the fixatives and have not discovered any problems with any of them. We don’t anticipate that there would hazardous materials or things floating in the Spektr that would be a problem for the crew. However, we have also suggested, and the Russians have their own plans, which we will integrate with them, ways in which to mitigate any hazards that might show up such as having clean-up materials, towels, plastic bags, etc. available, should something appear when they open the hatch so that they can gather it up or clean it up. I suspect that most things have found a resting place in the ensuing time and as long as the Mir is relatively quiescent prior to the EVA I don’t expect a lot of debris or other matter floating around in the way of the cosmonauts.”

Q: “What kind of concerns do you have, both for Mike Foale and for Sasha Lazutkin, given the fact that Mike’s training as Jerry’s back-up was primarily for an external EVA to install OPM, whereas Sasha Lazutkin has never done an EVA previously?”

Culbertson: “Sasha’s very well trained on the ground also, and Mike has experience in EVA and in the Russian and American suits. The number one concern during an EVA, I believe, is the crewman’s ability to deal with his suit and maintain his own vitality, his own life-support systems and deal with any contingencies that come up. The location of it is another factor that you work with as you conduct the EVA, whether it’s inside or outside, whether you’re worrying about snags or sharp edges or the route you have to take or whatever. You deal with that during the preparation and the rehearsal. But the number one concern is that the crewmember knows how to use the suit, how to deal with emergencies if they should occur, and I am confident Mike knows how to use the suit and will get refresher training that will be very valuable and he will be fully up to speed before he actually conducts the EVA. Sasha was planning on doing two EVAs during this mission anyway, so he was fully certified and prepared, so I don’t believe there are any issues in that area.”

Q: “If Sasha’s suit was to get cut from something while he’s in Spektr, how quickly could he get out of that situation back into the node, close the hatch, and get repressurized? Would it be a very rushed situation? Would he have some leeway time before the suit would leak too much, and what would have to be done in that kind of a scenario? For instance, I understand at the elbows the suit is only a single thickness.”

Culbertson: “They have a back-up air supply just like our suits and if they encountered a leak they would open that back-up air supply and of course feed the leak to try to maintain pressure. On a nominal repressurization, once they close the hatch, which I believe can be done fairly quickly, it’s about a 20 or 30 minute repressurization, and generally you have about 30 minutes on the back-up air supply. But it can be done quicker than that. I don’t know the exact numbers, but according to people like Sergei Krikolev, who have done many EVAs, it can be done fairly rapidly. So they believe that any leak size that is reasonable or expected in a case like that they could deal with.”

Q: “Given this latest power outage, what’s the status of the rest of the experiments, especially the U.S. experiments, the greenhouse, the beetles? Are any of them at risk now due to the lack of power?”

Culbertson: “They were operating at a fairly low power level already. The greenhouse can go a couple of days without watering or light. The beetles can actually go about 25 more days on battery power if necessary, so it’s just a matter of whether he can actually get to them and tend them, provide water and light for the greenhouse experiment. Right now I believe they’re pretty much status quo and we’ll watch over the next few days what he’s able to do to recover them.”

Q: “You said that this repair mission was a minimal risk. Have you made a formal probability of success estimate on this mission?”

Culbertson: “No, we haven’t done a statistical analysis on it. When I say minimal risk I mean in terms of the normal risk that you encounter during an EVA. It’s not a risk-free environment. It’s just that you do everything that you can to manage those risks and we have the spacesuits on both sides, as well as procedures that are designed to minimize those risks and deal with them, control the hazards that you might encounter. Being in space itself is not a risk-free environment, but speaking in terms to an EVA where you might encounter the need to do extremely complicated repair or move large objects around, this one is fairly minimal in relation to that.”

Q: “So this is minimal risk relative to EVAs, but it’s a risk, there’s some risk.”

Culbertson: “Certainly there’s a risk.”

Q: “So you’re saying it’s unlikely anything would go wrong. If there were any mishap, people might ask why are we doing this mission. Could you, in very simple terms, explain why it’s in America’s interest to do this EVA.”

Culbertson: “Well, I believe that the primary reason for going ahead with the EVA is to regain some power for the station itself, which will make life better for Mike Foale onboard, who is our American up there. Of course it’ll benefit his other crewmembers, which we’re also concerned about, but I believe the more margin they can have in power the better off they’ll be. They’re OK right now, once they regain attitude control, but we’d like to see more flexibility. The secondary reason is for going ahead and conducting it are the same reasons that we had for having Jerry Linenger do an EVA during his mission, which was the one just previous to this, and that’s the learning of the Russian procedures and what it’s like to do an EVA in a closed environment. There’s always a chance during the upcoming International Space Station that we might have to repair a depressurized module or go in to retrieve equipment or whatever. We’ve done simulations of that in the water, but this is the best simulation you can get, and I believe that we’ll learn some good lessons from this.”

Q: “Are there any unkowns in this EVA that you’re trying to get a better handle on, issues that are poorly understood at this point, such as disconnecting all the cables and all the hatches?”

Culbertson: “There are really no unknowns, there are no hazards that we feel we don’t have a basic understanding of. We have not identified anything that we would consider a showstopper at this point. There are some things that we’d like to be more thoroughly addressed, such as how we deal with communication failures or umbilical failures, but those will come in time and they will be thoroughly answered at the readiness review couple of days prior to the EVA itself. Basically, it’s a well-understood activity by both us and the Russians. They’ve been very open about our people participating in the preparation and planning for this and our people are very confident that everyone knows what we’re doing here.”

Q: “You’ve all been working very hard I understand, but nevertheless there seem to have been some communications confusions to say the least between what he Russians tell us and what the Americans, you and Houston, tell us about the situation. Are you at all concerned about the lag time between the time you get full information about things such as the emergency last night? And could you react fast enough in an emergency given this lag time? And could you include in your answer some details about the mechanics of how you do get this information?”

Culbertson: “Generally in a situation like this my phone begins ringing in the middle of the night and rings for the rest of the night and that’s what happened last night. As soon as people understood what the problem was, we were notified and our folks began participating in the process. The fact that we are dealing with a nine-time-zone difference here is a factor in the lags and, in general, I feel that because we have people on site and because the Russians know who to call and we know each other very well, that we’re actually communicating very well. If there’s a lag, it’s mainly due to the logistics of the situation and not due to any reluctance or inability to communicate. In general I feel that we’re communicating extremely well in this situation, far better than we were at the beginning of the program.”

Q: “What will Mike Foale have to do in terms of gestures and movement? Some EVA veterans have raised a concern about the fit of this spacesuit, which was not designed for him. Is the fact that the gloves were not designed for his hands, for instance, a problem?”

Culbertson: “It could be. That will be verified during the fit check, which was scheduled to occur in a couple of days, and that will all be a part of the readiness review process as to whether he can use the suit that’s up there, whether it fits well enough. If it doesn’t fit well enough and he’s not happy with it, we won’t do it.”

Q: “During the EVA, will you leave all the decisions on what’s going on to the NASA people and the Russians in Moscow, or are the NASA people in the U.S. going to be online ready to make some calls in case there’s some problem? Who’s going to be ultimately in charge during that EVA from our end?”

Culbertson: “The way that would work would be like any operational situation, the same way we do with the shuttle. When you’ve got a real-time operation going on, the flight director and the crew commander are together in charge of what’s going on. In this case the commander would be somewhat isolated from the situation so you’d have to rely on the crew on site and the senior member there would be the flight engineer. But the flight director in Moscow will be the one in charge of the overall operation. We will be following it very closely with people both here and in Moscow, and if we have questions we’ll certainly be able to raise them and, based on past experience, we’ll get a very quick answer. The actual execution needs to be done by the people who understand it best, and who have been involved in the process all along, and who hold the responsibility for executing it safely, and that’s the way we’ll do it, that’s the way it’s been done in every space operation that I’ve ever been a part of or military operation or anything that’s being done in a time-critical fashion.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of July 18, 1997

Press Briefing - Frank Culbertson

On Friday, July 18, Frank Culbertson, NASA Program Manager of the Shuttle-Mir Program, gave a status update and answered questions from the press.

Culbertson: “This morning on the Mir, things are continuing to improve. The crew has gone through the procedures and the techniques that they have for recovering power. The Vozdukh system is back on for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the Mir is now being controlled by its own jets, so they do have a good attitude reference system, and the computer is back on line, so they are able to hold attitude very well in relation to the Sun. The hope is that by tonight they will be able to do some check-out on the gyrodynes themselves, and possibly by some time tomorrow be back on gyrodyne control as they were prior to the inadvertent disconnect of the cable that caused all of this. So we expect them to be back in fairly good shape powerwise within a day or two, and they are continuing to charge the batteries, which is the problem they've been trying to overcome, and that should put them back on line for being able to conduct fairly normal operations onboard. The impact of this, of course, has been a delay in the training and preparations for the planned EVA next week.

“The Russians announced today that it would not occur on the 24th, it has been delayed. The actual amount of the delay will be determined next Monday. They have their own flight readiness review next Monday morning and at that time they will announce when the EVA will occur. I suspect that the crew will be having a fairly light schedule tomorrow as well as Sunday as normal, and pick up things on Monday. Once the determination is made as to when the EVA will occur, then we will respond accordingly and activities will pick up again whenever necessary. We will not hold our joint readiness review on the EVA as we had planned on Tuesday. That would occur two or three days prior to the actual event itself, so once they decide what day that will occur then we will reschedule that.
“In the meantime the crew seems to be doing very well. They were operating in the dark for a while, but the lights are starting to come back on and they are back to normal repair activities. There are a number of activities that were delayed, normal maintenance and replacement of components that they do on a continuing basis, that they will be busy with today and tomorrow to catch up on since they will not be doing some of the EVA preps. But that's a fairly low-level activity.
“Otherwise it's been a repeat of the previous problem in that it just takes some time to go through this methodically, make sure that you check out each component before you bring it on line because of the previous low power situation, and they'll continue to do that over the next day or two and then we'll have better information by Monday when we do the next briefing, and we'll fill you in then on what the exact schedule is and the situation onboard.
“We'll be happy to take questions and try to clarify things and let you know what we think is going to happen next.”
Q: “Some news accounts from Russia this morning suggest the Russians may be inclined to wait for the next crew to do the spacewalk. What have you heard in that regard? Do you think that would be a good idea or are you ready to press ahead with Foale and Lazutkin doing the spacewalk?”
Culbertson: “That is one of the options, to wait until the next crew comes up in early August, and lot of that'll depend on when they really get things stabilized with the power again and when they could conduct the EVA if they were to do it with this crew. We believe that with the proper training and preparation this crew could do that. Mike and Sasha would be well qualified if it comes to that, but also we've got to start thinking about the calendar. The next Soyuz is supposed to come up on August 5, and there are a number of preparations that they need to do before that happens and they may just run out of time to do it with this crew. There also is a concern that we've been discussing with the Russians over the power margins themselves. We need to look at if we really are this marginal on power and if they were to have a similar situation during the EVA itself, how would that play out and would we be able to complete the EVA. You don't want to get in the middle of it and then have to stop it part way. So all these things will be considered before they make the final decision.”
Q: “Did the events of the last 24 or 36 hours, this last hiccup in the space station activities change the U.S. position on that at all. Are you now more inclined to ask that they wait or are you ready for Mike Foale to do it just as you were before this incident? How much of a factor is that in itself has been in the U.S. position on what they should do?”
Culbertson: “We don't ignore any information, and this is an event that we need to look at and see how that affects our thinking on the power margins and the overall readiness of the crew to do this. However, our thinking on Mike's ability to begin training has not changed at all, and if the decision is made that they want to go ahead, and all other factors indicate that they should go ahead from a standpoint of Mike Foale being able to participate, we still feel confident that that could happen.”
Q: “Are you saying that the reports that are coming out of Russia that say that any kind of EVA before the next crew comes up is canceled are incorrect?”
Culbertson: “That is, in fact incorrect. The Russians have not made that decision yet. There is lots of speuclation, and I know there's lots of reports in the press that this is a done deal, but that's not true. The final decision will not be made until Monday when their management has a chance to assess the entire situation.”
Q: “As an astronaut who has been in space, can you describe how fatigue can affect you?”
Culbertson: “It's not just space flight that fatigue can affect you on. It can happen anywhere in any operation in any business and it's something you need to watch all the time to be aware of on a personal basis and as a supervisor or manager you've got to watch your own people, so this is something we watch very carefully and if you have indications that fatigue is affecting people's performance, then you take that into consideration.”
Q: “In your personal experience, having been overseeing what's going on there to a certain degree, what do you think is really going on with regard to fatigue and stress and so on?”
Culbertson: “That particular day was not that stressful, so that may not have played in completely into the overall activities. But fatigue has been a factor for this crew throughout the mission because they've had to work long hours and do a lot of repair work. It's been stressful in that they've had one of the most difficult space missions in history, starting with the fire that occurred shortly after Tsibliev and Lazutkin came onboard the station. It's been a challenge for t hem, and that is s omething that we need to look at very carefully and how we task them in the future and how we conduct operations. It has been a factor in all our discussions with the Russians on what the condition of the crew is. We do not ignore as one of the elements in this.”
Q: “you said they were going to check various components as they begin to go full power back on level. Would your address the stress on the space station. Has it been originally designed to go through such dramatic power downs, power up, reboot?”
Culbertson: “The station itself can handle power up and p9ower down with no problem and it has many times in its 11-year history. The things you worry about are the things you would worry about on your own computer. If it is shut down inadvertently in the middle of a program or if you take a lightning strike in the neighborhood and it's shut down, you're going to want to be careful about powering it back up when you bring it back on line. It's the same type of considerations. Any electronics, you need to be careful about when you bring them back up, and before you rely on them you want to go through some type of a test to make sure that they are in fact operating as designed.”
Q: “Has the station itself gone beyond the timeframe it was designed originally to spend in space?”
Culbertson: “The Mir Base Block was originally certified for five years. It's been recertified periodically since that time. The Base Block's the only one that's been there over 11 years; the others have been varying times from about a year and a half for the Priroda, up to about 10 years for Kvant-1.”
Q: “Was the Progress delivery, with the canisters and the batteries, etc. quite critical? And when is the next cargo shipment?”
Culbertson: “Yes, the last Progress was a critical delivery and it went very smoothly as you may remember, and the crew was very happy to receive everything that came up there. The next delivery of cargo actually will not be until the shuttle arrives in September. There'll be a small amount of hardware on the Soyuz, but they can't carry very much up there in addition to the crew. The shuttle right now is scheduled to launch on September 18 and would dock about September 20. We are going to be carrying some batteries, food, the other normal logistics that we carry on a typical shuttle mission to the Mir. Following that the next Russian Progress vehicle is scheduled for October 1.”
Q: “During the past 48 hours, have you at any time discussed abandoning the mission with the Russians?”
Culbertson: “I talked to our counterparts about the condition of the crew periodically through the entire mission, and after the problem with the EKG where we h ad the indications of the irregular heartbeats on the commander, I asked them at that time if they felt that this was imminent or that they would have to bring him home and that if that were the case we would support as necessary, either through recovery forces if were required or with any other support that they might ask for. And they assured me at that time that their medical experts had looked at the situation and felt confident that continuing the mission was the right thing to do at this point and I told them that we are ready at an y time to support if they were to reach that decision and we want to be involved in monitoring the criteria that would used and the overall health of the crew. That's been an agreement throughout the program, that we will have periodic discussions about that and if it became a possibility we would up the level of those discussions.”
Q: “When did you last speak to Mike Foale and what is his mood as regard how this mission is going and what it's purpose is?”
Culbertson: “I last personally spoke with Mike on Wednesday, shortly after the proposal came through to use him as an EVA crew member. He at that time was very enthusiastic about the idea and felt sure that he would have adequate time to train and prepare and that he had good instruction onboard in the person of the commander. He was all for it if that's what we decided to do, but understood that we had to go through our review process. But he sounds good. I hear his voice almost ever y day in monitoring the comm from the Mir, and a number of our people do talk to him about specifics of his program as well as the plans that are coming up. We have a team in Moscow that talks to him at least twice a day if not more, and he sounds very good. In fact, yesterday he described this as quite an adventure that continues.”
Q: “Are you absolutely confident that the dyanmics, the relationships between the three astronauts is good and is working properly?”
Culbertson: “That's one of the strongest points that we have going on right now that the relationship between the three of them seems to continue to be strong and cooperative and in fact very supportive of each other, and I believe that's one of the elements that all of us are finding to be a positive in this, that they do seem to be looking out for each other.”
Q: “Do you have any more word on who might have pulled that plug, and how and why it happened?”
Culbertson: “No, I haven't heard anything. I've heard lots of speculation in the press, but we don't have any word from the Russians on who might have done it.”
Q: “When the next Soyuz crew goes up, is that going to be a shortened overlap period if the EVA is not performed prior, and what may be the limiting factors to have so many people onboard at once?”
Culbertson: “If they don't do this EVA at this time, their power margins will remain as they are now, which says that that would limit quite a bit the ability to support six people and conduct the science program that the French space agency has planned. That says that if they don't do the EVA there's a good chance t hat they probably would go with a shorter and maybe fewer crew mission next time. But, again, that decision will be made next week. I believe that if they do not fly French science program that there would really be no reason to stay up there for 21 days as is currently planned, so you probably will see a normal handover of about five to seven days between the two crews before the other one would return. But we need to see how the schedule comes out and what t he review of the whole situation is by the Russian management.”
Q: “If you were making the choice and you could choose a fresh crew that's practiced some of these routines, albeit on the ground, to do these repairs or whether you would have Mike Foale help do it, would you be a little bit relieved if a fresh crew would do it and relieve Mike Foale of responsibilities that he never really signed up for when he joined the program?”
Culbertson: “I'd be happy with it either way. I believe that we could support either option. Mike is very competent and will be thoroughly prepared and I have confidence he would not tell me he's ready unless he absolutely is confident of that. However, having a fresh crew go over the procedures and review them and be ready to go is a good option also, and I know I sound like I'm waffling, but they really are both good options that we could deal with and support fully.”
Q: “Based on what you know today, which option do you personally favor, given Mir's condition, and all the other things?”
Culbertson: “I really would like to wait until the power situation is stabilized and we see what their margins really are at that time and whether there has been any damage to any of the equipment during this process and reserve judgment on that until next Monday.”
Q: “Regarding the overlap, if t hey only launch the two cosmonauts on Mir-24 to do the space walk then, what is the minimum for Mir. I know there's a handover to show the new crew where things are located and all of that. What is the minimum overlap that you could have and get all that information passed back and forth?”
Culbertson: “Historically it's been about four or five days. They need time to do some handover and brief each other and to understand where things have been moved to and the configuration of the new modules, so I think four or five days is a reasonable time, but it could go longer if there's more to talk about..”
Q: “Is there any concern in the U.S. about the commander's mental wellbeing? Do you all still have full confidence that Mr. Tsibliev is up to doing whatever is necessary, whether it's riding out this EVA inside a Soyuz or whatever? Are you still totally confident in his ability as a commander?”
Culbertson: “We are confident that he can still function as a commander. We do certainly have concerns about the state of mind of all of the crew members because of what they've been through. We discuss these things in the proper forums and we have a medical group that talks to their counterparts all the time. These things are discussed openly in the right forums. Right now we don't have any indication that would say that he cannot continue to function as a commander and my counterparts have assured me that they have confidence that the crew can continue to do what they're doing on a day-to-day basis with no problem.”
Q: “If a decision is made not to launch the Frenchman in August, what is the fallback plan for launching him and how does that impact any U.S. visits to Mir down the line?”
Culbertson: “As long as the shuttle and the other spacecraft going to the Mir stay on schedule, what I would foresee if he did not go, would be a mission probably in January or February, more likely February, I believe that's when the next change-out of crew is to occur, and the shuttle right now is scheduled to go in mid-January, so I suspect that shortly after that they would launch a Soyuz with three people onboard and conduct the mission at that time as long as everything remains ready to go.”
Q: “Under the circumstances as they are today, with the calendar days flying by, does it appear that the Russians are leaning toward either option that is available to them? Do they appear to be leaning toward waiting on the next crew?”
Culbertson: “That's what the press has reported from Moscow, but I have'nt had any indication that they've gone one way or the other yet..”
Q: “Do you have any estimate on when might try on the Orlan suit and whatever space suit gloves he can find onboard because that might be the limiting factor itself that would force the decision if he can't comfortably fit into any of the gloves that they have?”
Culbertson: “As it turns out, the gloves are fully adjustable. They really only have two sizes for all the people that go to the Mir and the suit has lots of adjustment capability, so he is in exactly the same position he would be from a suit and hardware availability situation that he would have been if he were doing a planned EVA. They will try on the equipment probably about five or six days before the planned EVA, make all the necessary adjustments, and I don't believe the question will be if he can be fitted with the equipment, but just how much adjustment is necessary to make that happen. Mike is of a size that he is well within their range for suitability in the suit and in the gloves and I don't believe that will be a factor at all.”
Q: “If the choice is made for the next crew to do it on the short turnaround, what would be a limiting factor for the four or five days to support five people onboard? The candles, the Vozdukh, the power, water? ”
Culbertson: “Right now the consumable that is in shortest supply is the lithium hydroxide canisters for CO2 removal. However, the Vozdukh is working and they'd have to supplement that a little bit with the canisters if they had more than three people onboard. So that's a consumable that they'll watch very carefully, but I believe the limiting factor will just be on the amount of time required for the two crews to do their handover and be assured that the oncoming crew has all the information they need before they conduct their mission.”
Q: “You made the comment yesterday that the commander would have to be really skillful to go into the Soyuz and manually put it into the proper roll so it went into solar inertia each time it went around to manually point it. As a pilot, how difficult would it be to manually instruct from a very small spacecraft to control the entire stack to go through that spin? How difficult is it for Tsibliev to set up the proper rotation track the Sun?”
Culbertson: “Because the Soyuz docks at about a 45° angle to actual orthogonal axes of the station itself, Tsibliev has to use two jets in two axes to set up a roll of the stack itself. They are trained to do this and he's had plenty of practice this mission to do this, so I suspect he's pretty good at it.”
Q: “Is any consideration being given to returning Mike Foale aboard the Soyuz with the Russian crew in August, and if not, why not?”
Culbertson: “We look at all options all the time about how we might proceed with the mission, depending on what were to occur. Right now there's no indication that we should plan on doing this and there's nothing that says that we need to terminate his mission at this time. He's doing very well and in fact is a very highly contributing member of the crew. So there's really no reason to bring Mike back early. I think finishing his mission is important to him and important to the overall program, and unless he were in danger or we felt he were unsafe up there, then we would not recommend something like that. And I think if we reached the point where we thought that were true, we'd recommend bringing everybody home.”
Q: “What is the downside to allowing the next crew to do the repairs?”
Culbertson: “The downside is that they would not have t he information that they might be able to gain by going inside the module at this time. There is some thought that they may learn something once they see inside that would modify the load of the Soyuz as it comes up. They may want to put some additional hardware onboard. They may want to do some additional training or simulation on the crew coming up if they were to learn something unexpected inside the Spektr. They may see some evidence of where the leak is or they may difficulty with the cables themselves. They may have to change the configuration of the jumpers or something. So mainly they will not gather the information they were hoping to prior to the launch of this next mission.”
Q: “Is the Mir crew now using oxygen masks to breathe, and what's the temperature on the Mir right now?”
Culbertson: “ No, the atmosphere on the Mir right now is very comfortable. They are operating within normal temperature ranges. The O2 is well within what we would consider normal limits. They are supplementing a little bit occasionally by the oxygen that came up on the last Progress, but have not had to worry about that in the last day or two. The CO2 removal system has been turned back on so they're not having to use any of their consumable lithium hydroxide cans, so basically the environment is back to a fairly comfortable level - and never really left the comfort zone during this entire operation.”
Q: “Can you compare the situation yesterday with the situation immediately after the collision on June 25? Was yesterday worse?”
Culbertson: “Yesterday was almost identical to the situation shortly after the collision in terms of the power levels and the activities required to recover it. We could have replayed those press conferences and you probably wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of July 25, 1997

Mark Severance, one of the NASA Operations Leads at Mission Control Center in Korolev, reports on the current status of the systems on Mir.

Severance: “We’re in pretty good shape. We’ve had a very productive week of work onboard the station. By the end of last weekend we had fully recovered from the motion control system and the electrical power system anomaly that we had last week, and the systems are now in a nominal configuration. All the batteries onboard have good charge levels. We’ve got three-axis attitude control using eight gyrodynes. We have full capabilities to the Altair satellite system for voice, telemetry, and television, and we're using that to supplement our communications coverage of the U.S. and Russian ground sites. All the environmental parameters onboard are nominal and it’s very comfortable inside the station. The Vozdukh carbon dioxide removal system is currently running, as is the condensate removal system and the air conditioner. Right now we don’t have to run the Elektron electrolysis O2 generation system because we have the ability to reboost the oxygen levels with oxygen tanks contained in the Progress. ”
Q: “With the decision that the next crew of cosmonauts will perform the internal spacewalk to regain access to power from Spektr’s solar arrays, what activities are now occupying the current crew’s time?”
Severance: “Since the postponement of the EVA, Mike has been able to return to a more normal science program. This week he completed the planting of the first generation of space-born seeds, seeds of a type of mustard plant that have been previously grown onboard the station, which are being studied as part of the joint Greenhouse experiment. The principal investigators on both the Russian side and the U.S. side are very ecstatic with the results of this experiment so far. He’s also continuing with photography of the crystal and material samples of the colloidal gelation material science experiment. He’s monitoring the growth of the crystalline structures of these materials through photography. He’s also continuing to monitor and perform scheduled ventilations of the beetle experiment that is evaluating circadian rhythm cycles of a certain type of beetle that, on Earth, has a very defined circadian cycles. He also resumed his Earth observation program this week and is photographing current phenomena on the Earth’s surface at specified locations on the Earth. And he’s also continuing to participate in normal medical monitoring experiments and psychological monitoring experiments that had been planned across the duration of this flight.
“Vasily and Sasha have pretty much begun their preparations to return to Earth. They’re still conducting a little bit of preventive maintenance onboard the station. Today they’ve been working on a ninth gyrodyne unit, trying to bring that on line, and that will allow us to control the attitude of the station to higher accuracies. Sasha and Mike have also installed some new ventilation air ducts in the Kristall and Priroda modules to help alleviate a condensation problem that we’d observed in those modules. Mike reported to me today that that’s working very efficiently, that the air ducts are very nicely removing the condensate from both of these modules.”
Q: “The Mir’s docking ports are both currently occupied, with a Soyuz capsule at one end and a Progress vessel at the other. What is the current plan for managing those vessels and the docking ports when the new crew arrives early next month?”
Severance: “It’s going to be a busy plan. Currently we have Progress N35 docked at the Kvant docking port on the aft portion of the Base Block and the Soyuz TM25 transport vehicle docked at the transfer compartment on the forward part or the nose of the Base Block. The plan is, we’re going to launch Soyuz TM26 on August 5. The next day, on August 6, we will undock the Progress M35 cargo ship from the Kvant docking port. The following day, on August 7, the new Soyuz TM with the new crew will dock to that docking port on Kvant. After a one-week handover of crew activities, the Russian crew will return in Soyuz TM25 and undock from the transfer compartment prior to the landing. The next day, the new crew and Mike will get onboard the Soyuz TM26, undock from the Kvant, and perform a fly-around and redock at the forward docking compartment of the Mir. This will leave free the Kvant docking port for the redocking of the Progress M35, which will be in station-keeping posture in the interim, and that will happen on August 16. Progresses can dock at either end of the station, but the aft compartment is the preferred location for Progress docking. The crew can then continue to use the Progress to load used material, throw-away materials, that sort of thing, prior to its final departure prior to deorbit, which is tentatively scheduled for the October/ November time frame.”
Q: “Mike Foale is finishing up his tenth week onboard the Mir today. From your conversations with him, how do you feel he’s doing amid all the unexpected activity during his time onboard?”
Severance: “Mike, I think, is doing great. We get the opportunity to talk to him a couple of times a day at least and he has remained very positive and upbeat throughout the course of the mission. I think he and Sasha and Vasily were a little bit disappointed when they were told the EVA was postponed for the next crew, and I think that’s probably pretty normal for any astronaut who’s preparing himself to go out on an EVA and then they get their EVA canceled. But they quickly got over that. Mike is very happy to be returning to his science program, and of course Vasily and Sasha, as you can imagine, are looking forward to returning home after such a long and challenging flight.

Mir-23 - Week of August 1, 1997

Interview with Mike Foale

On Wednesday, July 30, Mike Foale was interviewed by CBS News correspondent Bill Harwood.

Bill Harwood: “Mike, Americans have been riveted by your mission and quite concerned about your personal safety. How safe do YOU think Mir is? Were you ever personally frightened during any of this? And did you ever worry you and your crew mates might have to bail out?”

Mike Foale: “Wow, that was a lot of questions. I agree with you, it’s been a pretty exciting mission. As far as safety goes, the time that I felt most unsafe was right after the moment of the collision of the Progress vehicle when it hit down below us on the Spektr module. I’ve been in bad situations before where you don’t quite know how things are going to go next, and in those moments, you don’t get frightened, you just go into this mechanical mode of thinking things through and trying to figure out what to do next, quickly. And afterward, in reflection, days later, when I thought about what had happened, that’s when I got a little bit frightened by it all, but the day that it happened, nothing really came to mind like that.

“In regard to bailing out, the initial order for me to go to the Soyuz spacecraft was specifically with that in mind. When we thought there was a collision imminent, the thought in our minds was that we were going to have to bail out and I was the first one to go, per the procedures, to Soyuz and there I waited. Then, as it became apparent that it wasn’t a devastating puncture of the hull of Spektr module, and that we had time to work and try and isolate it, then I came out of the Soyuz, understood implicitly that we were not going to be abandoning quite yet, and then Sasha Lazutkin and I proceeded to work together to clear cables and hold the hatch in place over that module’s entrance way. We had about 24 minutes of what we call reserve time before we HAD to be in the Soyuz if we hadn’t isolated the leak. And so once we’d determined that time--Vasily, the commander, had done that--we knew that we had some time to think carefully, clearly, what we were doing and work through the problems of sealing off the leak in the hatch.”

Harwood: “Given all the problems you guys have had since the collision--you had an accidental power down two weeks ago and you’ve had to recover from quite a few problems since then--how’s morale holding up? We’re curious if you guys are tired, if you’ve been depressed during any of this. Are the Mir-23 crew--and yourself, for that matter--just looking forward to coming home after all this?”

Foale: “Well, at this point, the sad thing is that I’m going to be parting ways with the Mir-23 crew in the next two weeks. They are getting ready to go home. They are thinking about being with their families, I know. And I can feel it from them that they’re ready to go home. The’ve been here longer than I have, three months longer, and their time’s coming up. I still have two and a half months to go, and I have a new crew to welcome in two weeks and work with for a month and a half or so, and then look forward to a shuttle coming up to take me back to Florida and then to Houston, so we’re on slightly different schedules. However, the morale of our crew has always been very good, and even though, I think, when you stand back from it, and obviously from your point of view on Earth some bad things happened here, we never really got depressed or demoralized by this. We just worked through these problems. There are a lot of daily chores to do here that are difficult, and there are problems on the station anyway. We just approach those steadily, progressively, day by day and do the best we can to put them right.”

Harwood: “If Commander Tsibliev can answer this question, there has been some speculation here that the June 25 collision between Mir and the Progress vehicle that you were flying by remote control was caused either by pilot error or perhaps because the Progress itself had been overloaded and wouldn’t respond properly to commands. What do you think went wrong to cause the initial collision?”

Tsibliev: “Well, when you’re sitting here and you don’t know very much about what’s going on it’s very difficult to speculate and I wouldn’t want to make any comments on that because the causes need to be decided and figured out on the ground. All the materials, the audio tapes, the telemetry, and all of that is on the ground, and we have to take a look at that on the ground. We look at the data from the cargo craft and what type of thrust there was. Doing that up here is very problematic, but I was in control of the cargo craft and the impact was unexpected; the craft should have gone past the station.”

Harwood: “Commander Tsibliev, realizing that the technical details remain to be determined, what went through your mind when you realized that you could not stop the Progress vehicle and that it was going to hit the station? You said it was a surprise. How much time did you have between the point you realized you were in trouble and the actual impact occurred?”

Tsibliev: “Until the very end I was holding the handles to try and get the craft not to hit the station. If it had hit us directly, it would have punctured the Core module directly and we would have all died. As it was, it hit the Spektr module, caused a small hole causing a depressurization, and the crew acted very quickly to close off the module and save the station.”

Harwood: “To follow up on that, Commander, just to make sure I understand you, what you’re saying, or what the translator is telling me, is that if you had not taken more active control, then the Progress would have hit the Core module and that could have really been a disaster?”

Tsibliev: “What I want to say is that right before the impact, I was attempting to brake it and cause the craft to go by. If I had not been doing that, I’m sure that it would have hit the station directly and if it had done so, we would either have died or we would have been just metal floating in space. The craft was approaching the station without any information from the course navigation system, so in the future we have to look not at whether any individual here or there is at fault, but at the system as a whole and figure out what happened. You can always find somebody to blame but the important part is that we have a set-up here that was not worked out completely, or not perfected.

Foale: “If I might do this, I’d like to wish my wife today a happy tenth wedding anniversary. We’ve had 10 great years and I hope my thirtieth anniversary will be with her on the surface of Mars. It’s unfortunate that I can’t be with her today, but I wish her the very best.

Harwood: “Mike, another question for you, given the collision and the problems that you guys have had, and by the way, congratulations of course, given the recent problems aboard Mir, critics from congressional leaders to Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, and others have recommended that NASA bring you home as soon as possible and end Mir visits by NASA astronauts. What’s your response to that?”

Foale: “I think that would be a shame, and I think it would also be a shame if Wendy Lawrence didn’t follow after me because the United States is getting a lot of experience out of this. We’re seeing in front of us right now a station that’s been through 11 years of life and has worked pretty well for a long period of time, and now is older and is up against money constraints and is having to come up with new solutions to some problems--with some difficulty I think. We will come across those lessons ourselves on the International Space Station in a few years from now, once it’s been established in space. So this experience, I think, is really very valuable for us now, and I don’t think it’s a great price to pay for the United States to have a permanent presence of an astronaut onboard the Russian Space Station Mir. And I think though the conditions here are hard, and they’re not as optimum as they could be for science experiments and other things, what we’re learning in terms of operations, how to work together, is just absolutely priceless.”

Harwood: “Back to Wendy Lawrence’s and Dave Wolf’s flights. In that context, how important is it that the upcoming internal spacewalk to restore power to the Spektr module is successful? In other words, if power is not restored, how much useful science can you do and how could NASA justify sending anyone else?”

Foale: “In my own mind I separate the science mission from the reason for being here. I believe the reason why America is working with Russia is to further the international relations and cooperation, to bring Russia into the fold of the Western commercial sector, and to allow us to work together. So we don’t need science onboard Mir to do that. However, it’s very nice, and very, very profitable if we can do science as well as just be here helping out with the operations. Right now I have a number of experiments that are getting by without the power in Priroda and Spektr. However, I believe, to do good science here, you do need power from Spektr feeding the Priroda module. And so that EVA is critical to a science program onboard the Space Station Mir.”

Harwood: “How confident are you that the Mir-24 crew will, in fact, be able to make that repair, and what are your thoughts downstream about the feasibility of ultimately repressurizing and recovering the entire module itself?”

Foale: “I honestly don’t know. The whole plan as laid out to us looks good. I think we have the hardware here in the node and ready to go. We were ready to go and do the EVA had we been called on to do that. I think that procedure is straightforward enough. It’s just the unknowns out there. I know that the EVA can be conducted, and I know the cables can be connected, but beyond that, whether they can do a repair on the outside of Spektr or not, again, this is all new ground. This is very, very interesting and worthwhile ground that people are investigating and trying to solve together. This is a joint effort to repair the Spektr and American specialists are involved in this work as well as the Russians, and I think the experience is going to be very valuable. However, we do not know whether it will work as far as repressurizing Spektr goes.”

Harwood: “Do you have any concerns about the possibility of contaminants--blood samples or any other liquids--that may have been released in the accident? Any concerns about cleaning that up or any threat to either EVA crew members or repressurizing down the road?”

Foale: “That has not really been discussed in our normal technical discussions because we honestly don’t know. However, I lived in Spektr, that was where I had my stuff, and I had one or two drink bags on the walls, there was some fluid there. There is some blood in a refrigerator that has long, long ago lost power, of course. However, they’re all contained, the blood samples, especially, so I don’t think they’re going to be a problem. The only thing I’m concerned about is whether or not my shampoo bottles and the drink bags burst before they froze. But most likely they just froze and formed slivers of ice, and that’s the condition that they’ll be found in in Spektr. I doubt very much that there’s going to be much floating around in there. It was basically in pretty good shape in terms of things being tied down.”

Harwood: “What happened during the power down two weeks ago? A cable was accidentally unplugged. We were curious as to how that happened, who might have unplugged the cable, and what the consequences were.”

Foale: “To get the node ready, the node is the junction of all the modules of the Space Station Mir, unfortunately there are cables laid across the portholes, and those have to be unplugged so that we can do an EVA from within the node. The crew were unplugging one of about 100 or so cables, and they’re big, thick cables, and they’re all the same color, they all look the same, per a list the ground had sent up, and one of those was mistakenly unplugged, and even as it was unplugged we got an alarm, an emergency in the attitude control system. At which point the station lost attitude control and caused us to basically hang out of control in space for about two or three hours while the space station gyroscopes, which normally stabilize it effectively, spun down. And only after three or four hours was Vasily able, with Sasha’s and my help, to go to the Soyuz spacecraft and then control manually the space station. And it’s a very tricky problem to try and get the space station to spin in a rather rough way so that its solar arrays are pointing at the Sun. And then we were able to reestablish power. But because we were floating out of control for three or four hours, we lost power because our solar arrays were no longer pointed toward the Sun.

Read more about Mike Foale and NASA-5

Read Mike Foale's Oral History (PDF)

Mir-23 - Week of August 1, 1997 - Status Briefing

On Thursday, July 31, Frank Culbertson, NASA Program Manager of the Shuttle-Mir Program, and Valery Ryumin, Phase 1 Manager, RSC Energia, announced the decision to fly David Wolf on the next increment of the Mir mission and answered questions from the press.

Culbertson: “ We have made a decision to exchange Wendy Lawrence and David Wolf as prime and back-up on the next increment to be flown to the Mir station. As I’m sure many of you understand, making a change in crew assignments or the flight plan for a particular crew is one of the most difficult decisions we have to deal with in a program like this. I think it’s important that we understand what led up to this decision and how we’re going to proceed from here.
“As things progressed, or events occurred on the Mir, we began to assess the situation we were in. It became clear, for instance, during this current mission, that having Mike as a qualified EVA crew member was a critical component of the mission. We started thinking about how we should proceed in the future and whether that should be a factor in future missions when we only had three people onboard for either the Mir or ISS. My first preference, of course, would have been to have Wendy Lawrence qualified as an EVA crew member to be a potential participant in any future EVAs that occurred during her mission. We looked at her qualifications and what fit checks she had experienced, and it became clear fairly quickly that she was not qualified to operate in the Orlan suit just because of size. The other alternative was to evaluate her back-up, David Wolf. David has almost 150 hours of EVA training in the United States, and is well experienced in the training mode and under water. He has not actually done an EVA himself, but is rated very highly in that activity. As we began looking at the way the mission was shaping up, the critical EVAs that were planned for this mission, it became apparent that we would be wiser to respond to the reality of the situation and maximize our resources and participation, and see if there was some way that we could have David trained in the Orlan suit as a potential participant in Russian EVAs, and whether there was enough time to do that. Both crew members, Wendy and David, are equally trained on the science program and the Mir systems. Either one could operate as a full crew member. The only deciding factor was whether we thought it was important to have the potential for EVA participation during this upcoming mission.
“I’ll explain in a moment the process we went through to ensure that all interested parties and experts in this area were involved, but I want to assure you that this was done very carefully. We began talking to our Russian partners as soon as I arrived in Russia. A lot of this needed to be done face to face, both with my colleague Mr. Ryumin and with our crew members and the Russian crew members. Both sides agreed that we probably would be better off, if we could manage to do it, to have an EVA-qualified crew member onboard. It took some time to assess David’s experience and qualifications, as well as the capability of the Cosmonaut Training Center to have him trained in time for a reasonable date for the shuttle launch. We did not have all of that assessment completed yesterday when the Soyuz crew was presented at Star City, so we were not able to comment on that. It would not have been appropriate to speculate about such things during the presentation of the main crew from Star City, and I believe that press conference proceeded as it should have and per the Russian schedule. I actually thought it would take one or two days longer than it did to complete the assessment, but fortunately we were able to bring all the proper people and attention to this issue fairly quickly and were able to make a decision last night Russian time, in the afternoon Wednesday CDT, that this was the proper way to go.
“Based on Star City’s assessment of their capability to train David and the assessment of the Shuttle Program as to what they could accommodate in terms of a small delay, the announcement was made in the early morning hours Moscow time, in the afternoon EDT, that we had made this decision. Prior to that I had talked personally with David and Wendy to tell them that we had made this decision. But I want to explain a little bit about how we arrived at that.
“Anyone who is responsible for the operation of an organization or the welfare of people in that organization understand that there’s lot that goes into making a decision of such magnitude. It’s important that you consider all safety issues, training issues, and personal issues in such a question, and I want to assure you that Wendy and David were involved in the discussion of options that we were presented with and how they might play out from as early as I was able to identify what the real issues were. I talked personally with both of them before the decision was made, and Mr. Ryumin talked personally with his crew members before the decision was made, so they were well aware of what was being considered.
“Now we had to consider the capability of Star City to execute the training. They have assured us they feel optimistic that by the end of August they can complete the necessary training in the Orlan suit for David Wolf. We believe that with that schedule and the time required to prepare himself and Wendy Lawrence for the launch of STS-86, that we can launch the shuttle approximately 10 days later than was originally schedule. The exact date will be set later, but now we’re shooting for approximately September 28, and we believe we can accomplish everything necessary to get to that date. Wendy will continue to participate in the back-up role for David, and if, in the extreme case he for some reason were injured or were not able to fly, she still could fly and conduct the science program, but would not be available as a back-up EVA. In the meantime she will continue to work with David on the program that she had planned and the way she had planned to execute it, and of course will participate during the shuttle mission in the transfer of the critical science hardware, the logistics that support the Mir operations, and she and David and Mike will work together to start David out on the right foot on this mission.
“I think it’s important to understand that Wendy totally understands where we are now. I talked to her extensively before the decision was made, and called her first after it was obvious that this option could be executed. She took it very calmly and professionally. I’m sure she is somewhat disappointed at not being able to execute the mission, the science particularly, that she had planned for. She is happy that she will at least get a space flight out of it and will be able to participate in the activities on the Mir, and I think is enthusiastic about helping Dave get ready. I think it’s important to note that after we finished our conversation, Wendy, who knew I had a lot of anxiety about having to remove someone, or to change the plan for someone’s mission, said “Frank, I totally understand. If I were in your position I would do exactly the same thing.” Wendy and I communicate very well. We’ve been friends a long time, so it was a difficult decision to make, but I believe that the program will benefit from the additional training and additional capability that we will now achieve. We’ve learned a lot as we went though the recent problems on the Mir about how to maintain a station, how to respond to problems, and how to be realistic about what our resources are and our capabilities. It’s important to be responsive to the situation as it is presented to you, whether it’s in life or in space. We obviously are dealing with a very serious and technically challenging mission in space. It’s the most hostile environment you can imagine, but we have very professional people on both sides who take their responsibilities very seriously, make decisions very carefully, and look constantly at the safety issues. So I believe, as difficult as the decision was, we have made the right one, the program will be stronger as we proceed in this direction, and we can take the lessons that we learn here, and carry them forward into our future International Space Station.
“I’ve tried to address all the issues that I think are there, but I’m sure that there are questions and I’ll be happy to answer them as best I can, and if Mr. Ryumin would like to make any additional comments, he’s certainly welcome.”
Ryumin: “It is true, as Frank just told you, that yesterday morning I had a talk with the primary and back- up crews. We reached an understanding of our joint common problems with the crews, and the crews assessed those proposals that were made as reasonable and accepted them. The only clarification I would like to make to what Frank just said, is that we have not yet agreed upon delaying the launch date for STS-86, but we have discussed that it may possibly be delayed by 7 or 10 days. But I believe that we should try to observe the schedule that was developed earlier and unless we face a real necessity we shall try to keep that schedule, but if there is a substantial reason to delay, then we shall delay. There are no other additions I can make to what Frank has said. He has excellently covered the situation.”
Q: “What are NASA’s plans now regarding a mission beyond the one that David Wolf will be launched on to the Mir Space Station? Who would replace him on the last leg?”
Culbertson: “We haven’t worked that issue specifically yet, but obviously Andy Thomas is already here and in training as Dave’s back-up. He’s had EVA training, and I would consider him a likely candidate for that mission. There are some other possibilities that we will evaluate as we go in terms of the actual mission, or of backing him up, but it’s going to take us a couple of weeks to work through that, but I believe we have plenty of options to execute the seventh mission.”
Q: “Since there are many men who are 5'3", could you be very specific about what exactly it is about someone who is 5'3" that makes them too small to do space walks and use the Russian space suit?”
Culbertson: “The Orlan suit is adjustable to a fairly wide population. However, it’s minimum adjustment does not accommodate Wendy’s size. Height is a consideration, as well as reach into the arms and through the glove, and the ability to reach the controls on the front of the suit itself, particularly if there were contingencies to be handled. I would be very hesitant to put someone in the suit who is at the extreme limits of their capability to maneuver the suit itself or to take care of a situation in an emergency. I just don’t believe we need to stretch the envelope at this point. When we put Wendy into training, it was with the understanding that she could be fit for a launch and entry suit as well as into the Soyuz seating arrangement, but that there was no possibility for putting her into EVA training or fitting her in an Orlan suit, and that was very well known the very beginning of her training. Unfortunately we learn as we go here. We did not think that would be an important issue at that time, but events have proved us wrong. I wish I had had the ability to see the future at that time. We would probably have handled it in a different way, but I believe we need to be realistic about the situation we’re in now, and the best thing for us to do for the program and the station itself, as well as the wellbeing of the crew onboard, is to have an EVA-qualified crew member, and there was just no way in the time available to make Wendy capable of operating in the Orlan suit. David has had three fit checks already, and we know very well he can operate in the suit itself and he will go through the full training prior to launch.”
Q: “Just to clarify, it sounds like you’re saying that unless an extreme circumstance arises, Wendy will not be going to the Mir other than her brief visit aboard the shuttle. Does that mean that any subsequent missions by U.S. astronauts will be limited to those who are EVA qualified in the Russian equipment?”
Culbertson: “That’s right. She will go to the Mir on STS-86, participate in the docked activities, and then return with the rest of the crew and Mike Foale. We’re still assessing our future capabilities and future crew members, but I believe that there’s a good chance that we will opt for making sure that we have EVA-capable people going in the future. I just believe that’s the wisest course at this point.”
Q: “Is the fact that Wolf is a physician part of this decision? There are obviously going to be dangers with the EVAs and the problems with the environmental systems in Mir. Is having a doctor onboard a factor in having him there?”
Culbertson: “I believe it’s a benefit to a have a doctor onboard, but that was not a part of the decision at all. It just happens that he is one and can add capability to the operation on orbit. But that was not a factor in the decision.”
Q: “You’ve known for some time that there were problems aboard Mir, but you say that it was in face-to-face discussions with the Russians that you learned details about their plans for repairing Mir that forced you to change your decision about who would go in the next flight. Could you elaborate on those details? What are the maneuvers and EVA specifics that led you to make this decision so abruptly?”
Culbertson: “When the collision occurred, both sides had to reassess their programs as to how they would be executed and what specific events would occur. Mr. Ryumin very quickly provided us with the new planning schedule. It included EVAs that we already knew were coming, and as we began to assess the importance of those EVAs, such as one that’s scheduled to move a solar array to allow the docking of Endeavour, because it has different clearances than Atlantis does, the retrieval of some American hardware that’s critical to our science program, we began talking about how important it might be to make sure that we are capable of doing those EVAs if one of the crew members suddenly becomes unable to participate. And we looked at our options, and we worked through it in a lot of detail and over some period of time and this is the option we arrived that seemed to give us the most benefit for our joint operation.”
Q: “Is there some reason that Wendy Lawrence could not be considered for the last Mir visit after these critical EVAs are completed?”
Culbertson: “That’s not totally out of the question. She’s obviously qualified for the mission in all other regards, but we need to assess how important it is to have EVA-qualified members up there and I would predict that most likely we will continue to make that a part of the program, and I don’t believe that there is a way to modify the Orlan suit sufficiently to make it safe and useful for Wendy. So I suspect that even though she certainly could execute the science and participate as a crew member, it’s most likely that we will look for other options for crew assignments. We’ll certainly have plenty of flight opportunities in the future. She’s very well experienced and has been through a lot of training here as well as during her time as Director of Operations in Star City, and she’s going to be very valuable to the program, both on the shuttle and the ISS.”
Q: “Were there any other factors, no matter how apparently insignificant, that played into your decision to make this crew swap? Was it absolutely, entirely, just because of the EVA possibilities?”
Culbertson: “Basically, all the factors were pretty much equal. The EVA was the one that tipped the balance. We looked at the current predictions on how robust the science program will be, how much of her originally planned science could be accomplished based on the estimates of what power might be available if the EVA on August 20 is successful, and of course we have to be optimistic about that, but impact to either crew member was pretty much the same. Either is qualified to execute the science and so the deciding factor really came down to whether we want to make sure that we have EVA capability throughout this increment and that led us to evaluating whether Dave could be trained in time or not.”
Q: “You mentioned that you started thinking about this or discussing these possibilities shortly after the collision. When did those discussions start, and in the process of those discussions, did you consider at any point launching a Russian EVA-qualified crew member on Atlantis to Mir to take the American slot?”
Culbertson: “That was certainly one of the options that was considered and could have been a possibility, but I believe that because of the fact that we want to conduct research as well as participate in the operational aspects of the mission, it was important to try to maintain an American presence onboard. We could have flown a Russian if they had someone available, but I believe that we’ve taken the better course here with David getting qualified in EVA and participating in the mission. I want to make sure that w’re also clear that we still have a review process to go through to evaluate the current situation on the Mir, the recent events that have occurred, and be confident that we understand how the mission is going to progress and what safety measures are in place to ensure that the mission will be successful and safe for the crew members onboard. And that will occur, per our normal procedures and through our review process leading up to the shuttle readiness review.”
Q: “How will David Wolf’s space walk training compare to what Jerry Linenger did in terms of the number of hours in the tank at Star City, and tell us whether Andy Thomas is going to begin accelerated space walk training?”
Culbertson: “We’re still evaluating when to start Andy on the EVA training, but I suspect we will probably do that in time. He’s in the middle of other training activities right now. We need to evaluate one versus the other. David will have, I’ve been told, six runs in the Hydrolab, which will make him qualified as a generic EVA crew member. Probably the only thing he will lack--unless they can fit it in, and they will try to--would be specific task training that Jerry received to transfer the Optical Properties Monitor from the airlock to where it now resides on the Mir station. So he will not have quite as much task or mission-specific EVA training, but he will certainly be fully qualified to operate in the suit and do an EVA from the airlock.”
Q: “About a year ago, when Wendy was too short for the Soyuz, NASA paid for Russia to adjust the Soyuz seats. Are you going to get any of that money back since she’s not going to stay on Mir , and is there any chance you’re just going to cancel the last leg, where Wolf would have been flying?”
Culbertson: “We haven’t really worked any contract issues on this and the most important thing, I think, is the operations and safety aspects of this, and we’ll work the business arrangement in accordance with standard practices. In terms of the mission after Dave’s, our intent is to continue to fly that mission and we’ll work the details of who executes that and how we train for it over the next few weeks.”
Q: “Are you prepared to tell the Safety Review Board that the Mir is ready for American astronauts?”
Culbertson: “We’ve had some very productive conversations this week. I believe we understand each other on what needs to be provided for that review process. That information will be provided in time. Most of it needs to be actually timely, in terms of consumables and systems status. That will be, I believe, very complete and there will be no problem with providing sufficient information to the review process to make a very good assessment of the readiness to proceed with the mission. I think we’re communicating very well on that issue, but I’m not ready at this time to say that we’ve completed the process because we haven’t actually begun the formal process, though we do it informally continuously.”
Q: “Would you consider not sending an American astronaut if they fail to connect the cables?”
Culbertson: “I believe that if they had problems with that EVA we just have to assess what the problem was, what the potential was for recovering that power, and what the impact of it was on the overall program. But I believe that under the current situation, as long as we understand how we would proceed in the future given our capabilities in the upcoming increment, we probably would be able to proceed per the plan. But, again, we’re early in the process and we need to give all of our community a chance to review their concerns and give us a go. And we will do that in a very orderly and well-understood fashion.”
Q: “How many EVAs might an American astronaut perform in space, for how many hours, and what tasks will he be assigned, and who will perform the EVAs?”
Ryumin: “Currently, in the program that we have available right now, it calls for just one EVA by David. This EVA is associated with retrieval of the U.S. hardware mounted on the outside of the station. However, I would not rule out the possibility that he may perform other EVAs as necessary. In regard to who will perform the EVAs, naturally it would be more advisable to have Solovyev as primary EVA specialist. He has a lot of experience. And David will be assisting him.”
Culbertson: “And just to clarify, they have identified potential EVAs that he might participate in, but we have not reached any final agreement on how either he or even Michael Foale, who is also EVA qualified, might participate. We have some discussions that we need to conduct in the future and see whether that’s feasible, advisable, and how we might proceed. But it’s certainly a possibility.”
Q: “You explained that Wendy Lawrence was pulled out of this mission because she is too short for the EVA spacesuit. We heard that maybe she may not fit into the special seat used on the Soyuz for descent. Could you clarify that?”
Ryumin: “For emergency deorbiting, if they are to use the Soyuz space craft, they do no use general-purpose seats but a personal seat liner that is made specifically for each and every crew member. And such a seat liner for an emergency was provided for her, so this was not a consideration. The only consideration was that she was really too short for the Orlan suit available onboard. Those suits are built to several sizes too, but she did not fit into any of the available suits.”
Q: “Does that mean you will have to rebuild the Soyuz seat that was designed for Wendy?”
Ryumin: “No, the seat does not need to be redesigned or rebuilt. The point is that what needs to be changed is not the whole seat but a special foam liner, which is built individually for each person. We shall deliver an appropriate seat liner built for David Wolf.”
Q: “How was it that the men were provided with Orlan suits?”
Culbertson: “ In fact they were not provided with Orlan suits. We knew that they fit, and they all did fit checks. Wendy did not pass the fit check and that was a known quantity as we went through the program. It was just happenstance that the others happened to fit into the suit and we’re fortunate that Dave has had successful fit checks and is ready to begin training. They did not build special suits for anybody. They prepared Jerry for flight and for EVA in the Orlan suit, but that was because he was specifically tasked with an EVA.”
Q: “This sudden decision to change the U.S. crew member, what kind of impact will it have on the work program for the forthcoming mission and the morale of those crew members who are currently flying onboard?”
Ryumin: “I can only stress once again that yesterday I had a talk with the primary and with the back-up crews who will be leaving for the Cosmodrome shortly. I can appreciate the feelings of Pavel Vinagradov that he may not be the one who will take part in the EVA, but he displayed understanding of our common problem. Six EVAs are planned for their six-month mission, so chances are he will get to take part in one, and he’s not too worried about it. He understands that we are in an off-normal situation and we have to find a way out of that. Frank and I have worked out the way out of the situation and how to proceed, and the management of both space agencies are satisfied with this joint option.”
Q: “Could Wendy wear an American suit during the mission to the Mir?”
Culbertson: “Suits are not custom-made for people until they are assigned for a specific EVA on the shuttle, and in fact they’re made up of components that are fit together for the individual. Unless she were actually tasked with an assignment to an EVA mission, there would not actually be a suit sitting on a shelf in the States that would fit her, and it’s really not possible to fly an American suit to the Mir to conduct an EVA because all the systems are not compatible. It has to be a Russian suit on the Mir.”
Q: “If Solovyev and Vinagradov are not able to complete the repair to recover the power from the Spektr module, do you believe that American astronauts can still continue to go to the Mir?”
Culbertson: “Obviously we need to assess that, and see what the problem was that might have diminished the capability to recover the power, but I believe that unless something unpredictable happens that says we’d never be able to get it and it’s going to be reduced in some way, I believe that we can probably go ahead and continue with the missions. But it would obviously affect the science program and we’d have to reassess that. Right now I’m optimistic that these guys know what they’re doing and they’re going to have a successful EVA and I believe we’re going to be able to move forward with the program. The only detail is exactly how much power they’re able to recover. I think that they’re well prepared to get that done. If they don’t, we will assess at that.”
Q: “What tools and materials will be needed to repair the Spektr?”
Ryumin: “At this point it is premature to discuss any specific materials or tools that may be required to repair the Spektr. We’ll know more after the EVA that is currently schedule for around September 3. And then, depending on where the leak is located, decisions will be made on how it can be fixed. And then we’ll invite the necessary specialists to work on that problem. But basically, they’re already looking into that. At this preliminary stage of analyzing the problem, our specialists are working hand in hand working on how it can be fixed. If we believe we might need something more specific, I have no doubt that we shall jointly find the right way to do that Mir.”
Culbertson: “And of course this issue is very interesting to both sides because of the potential applications to future space stations and we are both actively pursuing options, but as Mr. Ryumin says, until we know the exact character of the damage, the leak, the hole, there’s really no way to predict how we would repair it. In terms of the question about Wendy’s awareness, Wendy and I had spoken and she knew what options we were considering, but she knew as well as I did that we did not have an answer as to whether it was possible to train David or not, and so until we had that answer, which I thought would take a day or two longer than it did, we were proceeding as we had planned with her as the primary crew member. The timing was unfortunate, but I think it was important due to the fact that the Russian crew was leaving this morning that they go ahead with their normal process for certifying and presenting their crew as they usually do. And there was no need to complicate that by speculation that we didn’t have a resolution to yet.”
Q: “You have covered extensively the technical side of replacing a crew member, and that’s clear enough. But if three crew members undergo joint training for a long time, they can certainly be considered as a good team, but now that one of the crew members has been replaced quite unexpectedly, shortly before the mission, what is the psychological atmosphere and how will the other crew members respond to a new crew member?”
Ryumin: “It was not only Wendy who took part in crew training. David took part in the crew training as the back-up crew, so they know each other very well, so when we talked to them yesterday, and told them that we might replace Wendy with David, it was no big surprise for them. They are very responsible people and they understand that in difficult circumstances they have to be able to complete the task with any crew composition. When we told them of this possibility, they did not complain.”
Culbertson: “And to be clear on that, that’s certainly a factor we considered in making this decision. But there was no apparent problem there whatsoever, and in talking to all the crew members, I’m very comfortable that any mix among the people concerned here will work very well.”
Q: “What experiments might be retrieved during the potential EVA, that Dave might be a candidate for?”
Culbertson: “One of them is the Orbital Properties Monitor that was installed by Jerry Linenger during his mission in the spring of this year. There are a couple of other experiments that are looking at the capability of the solar arrays to maintain their usefulness over time. I don’t know the value of them.”
Q: “Are these experiments no longer functioning and do they need to be removed?”
Culbertson: “No. This was a planned EVA in the program to retrieve these at the end of their experimental life, to retrieve the data that was gathered in the vacuum on the exterior of the Mir. So it’s part of the planned research program.
“I’d just like so say one final word. This obviously has been a very difficult decision. A lot of people’s plans and careers are involved in this, particularly Wendy and Dave and the Russian cosmonauts, but they are all very professional and dealt with this appropriately. The most important aspect of this, I think, is the fact that we were able to honestly present to each other at the management level what our concerns were, what the options are, and deal with them openly among the proper group of people without a lot of outside influence or unnecessary discussion that was not pertinent to the issue. And we did this very quickly between the two agencies. Two years ago, this could not have been done, but we’ve come a long way since we began Phase 1. We can deal with very, very serious problems and deal with them honestly, make technical evaluations, and come up with a solution that ensures safety, ensures the success of the program, and maximizes our ability to cooperate currently and in the future. My thanks to Mr. Ryumin and his team and all the people back in Houston who supported this effort, and especially my thanks to Wendy, Dave, Anatoly, and Pasha for their ability to deal with this change in direction and their professionalism. And I believe that we’re all going to be smarter, better, and we’re going to ensure that we have a good future in space together. So thanks to all concerned.
Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History
Read Valery Ryumin's Oral History