ADRIFT IN SPACE

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

When astronaut Michael Foale joined two cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir in May, he expected to spend most of his time carrying out scientific experiments. It hasn't quite worked out that way. On June 25 an out-of-control supply ship slammed into Mir, knocking out power, ruining many of Foale's experiments and making the three spacefarers scramble to perform emergency repairs. Then, early last week, Russian commander Vasily Tsibliyev announced he was having heart problems. He couldn't perform the more extensive repairs the ship needed, and if NASA was willing, the Russian space agency wanted Foale to put on a space suit and try to help put Mir back together.

But even as NASA was giving the go-ahead for Foale to start his training for this unanticipated job, another disaster struck. Someone--according to one report, Tsibliyev--pulled the wrong plug on an onboard computer, sending Mir into a spin and robbing it of power once again. Foale greeted this latest setback with the same low-key we-can-handle-it attitude that Americans have learned to expect from their astronauts. Yet as he and his comrades inched their way through a dark, cold, lifeless Mir for the second time in a month, no one could have blamed Foale if he thought to himself, if only in passing, Is this trip really necessary?

That's what the U.S. is starting to wonder as well. Joint operations aboard Mir were originally designed to give American astronauts space-station experience prior to the launch of a new international space station in 1998 and to keep the Russians engaged in a high-profile cooperative project. But a series of mishaps on the creaky, 11-year-old Mir over the past six months has raised questions about the station's safety, threatening to send space cooperation into what may turn out to be an uncontrolled spin of its own. Some U.S. legislators, reflecting widespread public exasperation, want NASA to consider bringing Foale home next month, rather than letting him complete his scheduled four-month stint. And they want the agency to re-evaluate whether astronaut Wendy Lawrence, due to replace Foale in September, should go up at all. Says Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Science Committee: "Astronauts are sent up to Mir to do scientific work, not crisis management."

An American pullout would be a major setback for the Russian space agency, which earns nearly $100 million a year selling rides aboard Mir to the U.S., as well as a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. So far, though, NASA has no such plan. And for the moment, the Russians have more immediate concerns. Last month's crash poked a hole in the station's Spektr module, forcing the crew to disconnect power cables so they could isolate the now airless Spektr from the rest of Mir.

Without Spektr's solar panels, the space station has been limping along at half power--a situation that, if unremedied, would make it impossible to keep Mir operating as a research station. Rather than abandon Mir, the Russians worked out a way the crew could fix it: Tsibliyev and fellow cosmonaut Alexander Lazutkin would put on space suits and take an "internal eva"--an indoor space walk--to reattach the cables. The power lines would then be passed through a replacement hatch that was sent up aboard a supply rocket earlier this month.

When ground control first told Foale about the proposal, he pronounced it "incredible"--and that was before he knew he might be involved. Not only would maneuvering through Spektr's narrow hatch be tricky in a bulky space suit, but it's possible that shards of broken glass and droplets of caustic chemicals like formaldehyde are floating around in there. Despite the danger, the Russians were all set to begin practicing for the repairs last week.

Then Tsibliyev called in sick. The Russians asked NASA to let Foale fill in as apprentice space repairman to Lazutkin, who would actually enter Spektr to reconnect the cables. And on Thursday, with Foale's enthusiastic agreement--the whole thing, Foale said, was "quite an adventure"--the agency agreed to have him take the preliminary step of training for the job.

That's when the wrong plug got pulled. "This was purely human error," said Russian flight director Vladimir Solovyov, visibly shaken by this latest crisis. "It is an especially unpleasant situation." The crew had to retreat to the Soyuz space capsule, which is permanently attached to Mir as an escape vehicle, and use the smaller craft's rockets to aim the tumbling space station's solar panels back toward the sun.

The mishap pushed back the repairs from last Thursday all the way to early August, when two fresh cosmonauts are scheduled to arrive in order to relieve Tsibliyev and Lazutkin. Russian space officials conveyed their decision to the Mir's exhausted denizens on Saturday, with an official announcement expected this Monday. "Considering the psychological condition of the crew and the present state of the station," says Solovyov, "it's probably best to wait for the fresh crew."

The replacements have been training to do the repairs in a huge water tank at Star City, outside Moscow. Unfortunately for him, the French astronaut Leopold Eyharts probably won't accompany them on the August launch as scheduled. A repair mission would be a quick up and down, too short for the experiments he had planned to do. Flight controllers may want to send up an extra Russian engineer anyway, and as a staff member from mission control quipped, according to a Russian state-TV report, "Right now, on Mir, it's not the best time for tourists."

One more aborted science mission won't help Mir's cause among its U.S. critics. But supporters such as NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin and presidential science adviser John Gibbons point to Mir's other benefits. The Administration offers "no apologies," says Gibbons, for the fact that U.S.-Russian cooperation is part of overall U.S. foreign policy, not just space policy. Moreover, he argues, Mir isn't just a scientific lab; it is also a place to learn about living and working in space. The space station's troubles, he observes, "have been giving us very practical understanding of what kind of problems you can run into and how you fix them."

Both Gibbons and Goldin insist that U.S. astronauts will never be deliberately put into a situation that's unduly risky. "Before each flight," says Goldin, "we have three teams look at two factors: Is it safe? and Will it be productive?" But at a basic level, space is an inherently dangerous place, and always will be. Unless the U.S. is prepared to give up forever on sending humans beyond Earth, the nation will have to accept a certain level of risk.

--Reported by Andrew Meier/Moscow and Dick Thompson/Washington

With reporting by ANDREW MEIER/MOSCOW AND DICK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON