by Jay Chladek
The rest of December was spent checking out the Kvant 2’s systems after it was secured in its new location and off-loading a Progress module packed with additional supplies. Viktorenko and Serebrov would not have to wait long before trying out their new EVA equipment. In mid-January they conducted two EVAs to attach a pair of star-tracker ports to Kvant 1 and then switched out some exposure cassettes. The second space walk was a combination EVA and IVA. Inside the depressurized docking adaptor, the crew removed the docking drogue assembly from Kvant 2’s hatch and placed it on the bottom docking port in preparation for the Kristall module.
On 28 January the crew conducted a third space walk, this time from Kvant 2’s airlock to place more experiment cassettes outside. The highlight of this third EVA was to test out the brand new YMK jet pack. Serebrov tested the unit first, putting it through a series of maneuvers. Unlike McCandless, who was completely free from the shuttle on his flight, Serebrov stayed attached to Mir with a thin nylon tether line. If he ran into problems, Viktorenko could reel him back in. The pack performed as advertised. Three days later, Viktorenko repeated the YMK tests. He also took along an X-ray and ultraviolet scanning apparatus attached to his chest and pointed it at Mir from forty-five meters out. The gear was used to measure radiation levels generated as the station passed through Earth’s ionosphere. After the test was complete, Viktorenko docked the YMK on an exterior cradle on Kvant 2. The pack only had a limited supply of fuel, so it was not used again after these tests.
In early February the Mir EO-5 crew was nearing the end of its tour of duty. The Mir EO-6 crew of Anatoly Solovyov and Aleksandr Balandin launched on Soyuz TM-9 and docked with Mir on 13 February. As the Soyuz closed with the station, the cosmonauts on board noticed that their periscope was partially obscured, and the docking camera on Kvant 1 detected several loose objects on the side of the Soyuz. But even with the problem, docking was made as normal. After six days of joint operations, Viktorenko and Serebrov loaded up Soyuz TM-8 with their experiment results (including the sealed American crystal growth experiment) and undocked.
Before returning home, Soyuz TM-8 performed a visual inspection of Soyuz TM-9 and noted that three of the insulation blankets on the descent module had come loose at the bottom but remained attached at the top. There were some concerns that the loose blankets would expose the descent module’s structure directly to freezing temperatures and perhaps cause condensation to build up inside the craft, creating risk of an electrical short. Managers on the ground said there wasn’t much cause for concern, but Solovyov and Balandin would eventually need to conduct a space walk to reanchor the dislodged blankets to keep them from interfering with the craft’s horizon scanners during their return in a few months. With the inspection complete, the Mir EO-5 crew used their thrusters to leave the vicinity of Mir and experienced a normal deorbit, reentry, and landing.
The next month was mostly occupied by standard Mir scientific experiments. The crew installed and integrated the station’s new Salyut 5B computer into Mir’s control system to replace the original Argon system. On 17 March a quail chick hatched in the incubator. It came from a batch of fertilized quail eggs delivered by a Progress resupply flight. Controllers on the ground announced that the quail eggs and embryos were part of a study into potentially using quail as a fresh food source for crewmembers on missions to other planets.
Kristall’s Arrival
The long-delayed Kristall (a Russian word meaning “Crystal”) module was finally launched into orbit via a Proton booster on 31 May 1990 and began its approach to Mir on 6 June. However, a thruster malfunction caused the Kurs system to abort the approach in a situation similar to what happened with Kvant 2’s delivery. Four days later, on 10 June, a second attempt was made, using the Kristall’s backup thrusters; docking was achieved successfully. The next day, the command was given for Kristall to extend its Lyappa arm into the lower receptacle on Mir’s docking adaptor, and the next hour was spent slowly moving the module to Mir’s ventral port. Now in a T configuration, Mir had a stable center of mass, and its orbit could be reboosted once again by the Progress modules.
The Kristall module’s primary function was materials processing. It was set up with several processing furnaces for growing semiconductors and an electrophoresis separation unit. It also contained several astrophysics and magnetic spectrometer experiments in addition to a set of Earth resources cameras. The most noticeable external features on the module were two APAS-89 docking ports, which were directly based on the APAS-75 common docking adaptor developed for ASTP. One was located on the end of the module, and the second one pointed to Mir’s rear. The purpose for the first adaptor was to accommodate a Buran shuttle. The second adaptor was intended to host an X-ray telescope intended for delivery by the Buran. Due to the tight-clearance issues with Buran’s payload bay, the solar arrays on Kristall could be folded as needed and redeployed later. While the docking port would never host a Buran, it would come in handy a few years later.
Solovyov and Balandin spent the next few weeks commissioning Kristall’s systems, but they also conducted a space walk in mid-July to inspect their Soyuz module’s heat shield and to patch the loose insulation blankets. Media reports alleged that the crew was “stranded” due to the damage to the blankets, but managers at Kaliningrad downgraded the danger. Still, there was a Soyuz craft standing by with a single cosmonaut ready to launch in case any damage was detected with Soyuz TM-9’s heat shield.
This would not be an easy space walk; in order to reach the descent module, they needed to secure a ladder to the orbital module so that one cosmonaut could climb down to tuck in the blankets. In the crew’s haste to get started, though, they opened Kvant 2’s airlock hatch before the cabin was fully depressurized, and the pressure differential caused the hatch to blow open quickly, bending the hinge. After conducting a grueling space walk that lasted over seven hours, the crew didn’t discover the problem until they climbed inside and the hatch would not completely seal shut. Thankfully, Kvant 2’s middle compartment could be used as a second airlock, which the crew used to finish their record-setting EVA. Another space walk to remove the ladder from the Soyuz was conducted a few days later, and television images from the cosmonauts relayed the hatch damage to the ground. Spare parts were needed in order to fix it.
39. Mir in 1990 with Kvant 1, Kvant 2, and Kristall modules docked. Courtesy NASA.
Late summer of 1990 brought about another crew change as Soyuz TM-10 arrived at Mir on 3 August with Gennadi Manakov and Gennadi Strekalov on board. Solovyov and Balandin departed a few days later, with Soyuz TM-9 conducting a normal reentry and recovery with no problems. The new crew was only going to be aboard the station through December, and their major task would be maintenance, which included rerouting power cables in Mir’s core module and performing repairs to the Kvant 2 airlock hatch. While the crew was unable to repair all the damage to the hatch’s hinge mechanism, they were able to replace some of the parts and got it to close fully, allowing the normal airlock to be repressurized. The rest of the hatch’s repairs would take place with the next crew.
To help with returning more materials-processing samples from Kristall’s furnaces, Progress M-5 contained a new item, a Raduga return capsule. This capsule, measuring one and a half meters long, looked like a truncated cylinder. It could hold 150 kilograms of cargo. The Raduga was designed to be installed in place of the Progress module’s hatch prior to undocking from the station. During Progress deorbit, the Raduga would be ejected, enter Earth’s atmosphere on its own, and deploy a parachute for a soft landing. While the Raduga would reduce a Progress’s cargo capacity somewhat due to their size and weight, it would mean sample returns would be less dependent on cramped Soyuz descent modules. Over the next few years, ten Raduga capsules would be used, with nine successfully returning their cargos to Earth.
A Japanese Visitor
Soyuz TM-11 lifted off from Baikonur on 2 December, bringing year-in-space veteran Musa Manarov back to Mir
along with Soyuz commander Viktor Afanasyev for his first visit. Accompanying them was Japanese television journalist Toyohiro Akiyama, Mir’s first paying customer. His flight was funded by the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) of Japan. Part of the reason for Manakov and Strekalov’s rewiring efforts on the base block of Mir was to accommodate Akiyama’s television and camera equipment, as he was there to document life in space for television viewers and to conduct a handful of Japanese-funded research experiments. Akiyama’s time in orbit wasn’t necessarily a great one, though, as he came down with space adaptation syndrome very early in the flight and never quite recovered before returning home with Manakov and Strekalov on 10 December.
Afanasyev and Manarov conducted an EVA on 7 January 1991 to finish repairs on Kvant 2’s busted hatch. In late January they installed a hand-operated boom crane known as Strela on Kvant 2 during a second EVA. This crane could extend up to forty-six feet in length with telescoping segments. A cosmonaut would ride on the crane while the second one operated the hand cranks. The system would allow a cosmonaut on the end of it to have access to many new areas of the Mir complex. It was a versatile piece of hardware, and Mir was eventually equipped with two of them.
The rest of Afanasyev and Manarov’s Mir stint also included troubleshooting Kvant 1’s Kurs docking system, after Progress M-7 had failed to dock on two separate attempts, aborting its approach both times at the last moment. The crew boarded Soyuz TM-11 and flew a Kurs approach; sure enough, a problem developed, forcing them to dock at the aft port manually. The fault was eventually traced to an antenna that was out of alignment. The Progress was then successfully docked on the vacated front port. Other than that, the rest of 1991 was shaping up to be business as usual.
Soyuz TM-12 lifted off from Baikonur on 18 May 1991 with cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalev heading up for a planned five-month stay in orbit to perform scheduled repairs and updates to the five-year-old station. British passenger Helen Sharman was also along for the ride. To celebrate the English visitor’s flight to Mir, the R-7 rocket for the mission had a large Union Jack painted on the spacecraft’s launch shroud.
Sharman’s path to orbit was thanks to a privately funded British venture known as Project Juno. The plan was to use funding from various private companies and a lottery to come up with enough cash to send a UK resident into orbit for a week of experiments on Mir. Born in Sheffield, England, Sharman held both a bachelor’s of science degree and a PhD from two British universities and was working as a chemist for the Mars candy corporation when she heard an advertisement on British radio in 1989 that said, “Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary.” A total of thirteen thousand applications were received, and the selection process whittled the candidates down to four British residents who were sent to Star City, Russia, to begin training. Ultimately, the four candidates were pared down to just Sharman and her backup, Timothy Mace, a major in the British Army.
Project Juno had plans to fly several microgravity experiments for Sharman to carry out; in the end, they lacked enough funding to fly the ambitious science program. It has been said that they also fell short of the required funding to even fly Sharman until Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev apparently mandated that the flight should go ahead anyway. Once the crew docked with Mir, Sharman still had plenty to do, becoming a guinea pig to study her adaptation to weightlessness and conducting experiments with available equipment on board, primarily with the station’s agricultural cultivator.
Unlike her Japanese predecessor, Helen Sharman adapted to space very well and spent much of her time enjoying the view, while also taking time to talk with school children in England via a ham radio. Compared to her overworked predecessors with packed flight plans designed to maximize the return in orbit, Sharman seemed to have a much better time on orbit as England’s first citizen in space, due to the more open schedule. Her cosmonaut colleagues acted like gentlemen during her stay. During a light moment, Krikalev even wore a tie during one of the dinners the crew had together, although one of the other cosmonauts was reported to have said, “A woman’s place is in the kitchen, not the cosmos.”
Eventually, after a week in space, the time came for Sharman to return home with Afanasyev and Manarov. The Soyuz undocked and landed successfully on 26 May, just four days before Helen’s twenty-eighth birthday. Sharman became a celebrity in England after her flight. In both 1992 and 1998, Sharman’s name was submitted by UK officials as a candidate for joining the ESA astronaut ranks as a mission specialist, but she was not selected on either occasion. Today she works as a lecturer and broadcaster specializing in space education while also working for the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom.
Artsebarsky and Krikalev’s time in orbit for the next five months was primarily devoted to EVA repair work and construction. They deployed a cosmic-ray detector from the University of California on Kvant 2, replaced an antenna for the Kurs docking system on Kvant 1, and erected a girder called Sofora from Kvant 1 as well, during a total of six space walks. To signal the completion of Sofora’s assembly, which towered fourteen meters over the station, the crew unfurled the Soviet flag from the top to acknowledge this achievement in space construction. Little did the crew know at the time that the Soviet Union’s days as a country were numbered.
Winds of Change
Back on Earth, a fundamental change in how the Soviets conducted their business was well underway. Since taking office in 1985, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had been trying to steer the Soviet Union’s government and economy on a path that conducted more open business with the West and didn’t suppress opposing opinions internally. The Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev had become more hard-line with increased expenditures in military hardware and less in social programs until his death in 1982. The two Soviet leaders who followed after Brezhnev didn’t last long due to their advanced age, as Yuri Andropov died in early 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko was already in poor health when he held office for a little less than a year before his own death in 1985.
The Soviet economy was in bad shape, as many Soviets were living well below the poverty level by Western standards. It was hoped that by offering social and economic reforms, the Soviet way of governing could still be preserved. While the intentions were good, the reforms led to increased calls for nationalism and self-governing among the many ethnic territories and once-independent countries that the Soviets had ruled with an iron hand for decades. This call for change extended to allied countries as well.
By 1989 there were movements underway in Eastern Europe to abandon communism and go with freely elected governments. In years past, such moves would have been squashed with the Soviet military moving in, as had been done in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Afghanistan a decade later. But Gorbachev reversed this policy in part due to the drain of Soviet resources brought about by the long war in Afghanistan.
In 1989, revolutions broke out in most of the Eastern European nations of the Warsaw Pact. These revolutions were inspired in part by a pro-democracy demonstration in China that ended with a well-publicized hard-line crackdown against student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Compared to the Chinese experience, most of the European revolutions took place without a shot being fired and ended with peaceful changes of government and the implementation of free elections within a year or two. Countries with once-closed borders began to open them, allowing their citizens to travel freely to Western Europe. The most visible image of this was the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989, which ultimately led to reunification of the once-divided Germany by 1991.
The spirit of revolution gained root in many of the Soviet Union’s republics as well. Competitive elections in 1990, which were allowed by Gorbachev’s reforms, had the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) losing many seats in government to candidates from opposition parties. During 1991, in an attempt to help stave off the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev hoped to re-form the Soviet territories into a confederation of sor
ts where the Soviet government would be more decentralized, but it would still have a common president, a common army, one economy, and the same general interests. In early August, Gorbachev was only a few days away from signing a treaty to create this new USSR when a coup was staged by Communist Party hard-liners and members of the military who wanted to see the old ways continue. Gorbachev was kept under house arrest during the coup.
The coup ran into public opposition, primarily led by newly elected Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who favored Russia moving completely to a free-market economy and totally abolishing the USSR. After three days, the coup collapsed, and Gorbachev was freed. Upon learning that it was Yeltsin’s people who broke the coup and not CPSU loyalists, Gorbachev knew the future of Russia and the other republics would no longer be a Soviet-led one. By the end of 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved, with most of its territory becoming independent countries.
These world events would alter the Mir program at a fundamental level and change how the space program did things, as it had to answer to a new leadership, a freely elected Russian one. The results of this alteration would ultimately affect the future of manned spaceflight in ways that neither Russia nor the United States could possibly imagine. For better or for worse, space station Mir would become the center stage for what came next.
10
The Odd Couple
Russia took over management of the former Soviet space program once the Soviet Union was dissolved. By government decree, the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA), later to be known as Roscosmos, was formed on 25 February 1992. A space probe design engineer from the NPO Lavochkin design bureau, Yuri Koptev, was placed in charge. By all rights, this agency should have had final say over space management issues. But with the manned program, things were a bit more complicated than that.
