PATCHING UP THE SHIP

By Jeffrey Kluger

For two months the battered Mir space station has been as much a ghost ship as a spaceship. Even as its crews have continued to live and work in four of its aging modules, its fifth--the once glittering Spektr lab--has remained dark and cold, ruptured by a collision with a cargo ship in June.

Last Friday Spektr flickered back to life. In a superbly executed internal space walk, Mir's new commander, Anatoli Solovyev, and his flight engineer, Pavel Vinogradov, floated into the airless lab and installed a new cable system that will provide electricity to Spektr and the rest of the power-thirsty station. "This is a super day," exulted NASA astronaut Michael Foale, who waited out the space walk inside Mir's Soyuz re-entry vehicle, the crew's lifeboat in case they had to abandon ship. "Well done, everybody."

The space walk was a welcome grace note in a week of too familiar problems for the pratfall-prone station. Four days before, the onboard computer failed--again. Shortly after, there was a touch-and-go moment as a cargo ship approached the station--again. Amid all this, the inevitable finger-pointing began. Russian President Boris Yeltsin suggested that recently returned crewmen Vasili Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin were largely responsible for the station's woes; at his postflight press conference, an indignant Tsibliyev denied the charge.

As for Mir, it's healthier than it has been all summer. But because of the damage to Spektr's hull, the science module is still uninhabitable by Foale or other NASA astronauts, for whom it normally serves as living quarters and science workshop. Though the listing Mir has taken a big step toward righting itself, its problems in space and on Earth are far from over.

The immediate goal of Friday's fix-it call was to install a new hatch on Spektr--one equipped with a cable assembly that would let the crew tap electrical power from the lab's solar panels while keeping the module sealed off from the rest of the station. Before the walk got started, NASA's Greg Harbaugh, who helped plan the exercise, played down its difficulty, brushing off news reports calling it the most dangerous EVA ever. "I don't think they get much easier," he said.

Not exactly. Shortly after Solovyev and Vinogradov donned their spacesuits and depressurized an airlock adjacent to Spektr in preparation for opening the airless lab's hatch, Vinogradov's left glove began leaking air. At first the cosmonauts were unconcerned, and a ground controller even joked as Vinogradov struggled to adjust his suit. "Pull it with all your proletarian force," he instructed.

But as the minutes slipped by--and air hissed from Vinogradov's limited supply--the leak stopped being a laughing matter, since a spacesuit rupture in a vacuum can be instantly fatal. Ultimately, Mission Control ordered the airlock repressurized and told the crew to scrounge up another glove and start all over.

When the cosmonauts turned again to Spektr's hatch, they had no idea what they would find behind it. In the wake of the accident, officials feared the lab would be filled with waving wires, glass debris and even globules of blood collected from the crew for medical tests. But when Vinogradov popped his head inside and peered around with a flashlight, he found that the place looked surprisingly undisturbed. The darkened instrument panels were covered with a layer of sparkly frost, and a cloud of white crystals floated about like fireflies. These were thought to be the remains of a bottle of shampoo that had ruptured in the vacuum.

Reassured by what he saw, Vinogradov eased himself into the module and turned to his principal task: connecting power cables from outlets in the wall to the new hatch. On Earth, the job would be little harder than screwing cables into a vcr, but in bulky gloves and zero G, it was far more difficult. As Vinogradov struggled, Mission Control urged him to take his time. "Don't rush. You have enough oxygen," the Mission Control chief admonished.

Even before Vinogradov finished, the space station's solar panels apparently caught a shaft of sunlight, and power began flowing to the blacked-out lab, causing it to stir to life. "I can see fans spinning and pumps working," he called out. "You're giving us really good news," a controller said, laughing. "Russian equipment works even in a total vacuum."

With the cables in place, Solovyev joined Vinogradov inside the lab, and the crewmen began their next chore, looking for breaches in Spektr's skin caused by the collision. The cosmonauts had originally been ordered not to turn the place upside down hunting for holes but rather just to scan for what NASA called blue sky showing through the walls. With the work going so well, however, controllers approved a more thorough search, and Vinogradov and Solovyev went so far as to disassemble Foale's stationary bicycle in order to create maneuvering room. "Michael," Solovyev joshed, "your riding days are over." For all that, the cosmonauts found no bulkhead rupture, and tiring rapidly, they backed out, sealed the new hatch and climbed out of their suits.

Just how successful the space walk was remains to be seen. It will take several days before the power system is configured and the station's hardware fired back up. Mir generates 15 kW of electricity--about enough to run a small house--and the repairs could help it produce up to 11 more. The additional juice would allow 80% to 90% of the station's planned experiments to be resumed.

With or without power, however, Mir remains a troubled ship. Earlier in the week, Solovyev was guiding an unmanned cargo craft in for a remote-control docking when the station's computer suddenly quit, sending the entire hydra-headed Mir into a slow roll. This swung its solar panels out of alignment with the sun, causing power to flicker and fade, and with it the TV monitor Solovyev was using to steer the cargo ship. But the veteran cosmonaut stayed cool, flying the craft blind until it was safely docked. That, said James van Laak, one of NASA's Mir managers, "was an excellent piece of piloting."

On Earth, former Mir commander Tsibliyev was anything but unflappable. Stung by Yeltsin's declaration that Mir's woes were caused by the "human factor," Tsibliyev made headlines at his postflight press conference by deflecting the blame to Russia's sickly economy, which, he insisted, has not allowed the space agency to maintain the station. "Factories do not operate, and parts have not been delivered," he said. At week's end Tsibliyev was at least partly vindicated when Russian space officials admitted the computer breakdown was caused by an aging component that had not been replaced.

For now, such squabbling will probably be put aside. With Mir stabilized, the crew is looking ahead to its next space walk--this one outside the ship to find and patch the elusive holes in Spektr's skin. NASA has agreed to allow Foale to train for that orbital excursion, though just when it will take place and whether he'll actually participate is still undecided. NASA officials firmly state, however, that as long as Mir stays sound, they will proceed with plans to send astronaut David Wolf up to relieve Foale in late September. Ghost ship or not, Mir will apparently sail on.

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

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