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Mir Oxygen Problem Just a Communications Snafu
Reports by NASA August 25 that the Russian Mir space station had lost its primary and secondary oxygen systems turned out to be more symptomatic of communications difficulties between Russian and American officials.
NASA originally reported that the primary Elektron oxygen generator had gone offline, and the backup system of lithium perchlorate "candles" was also not working, leaving the station without any system to generate oxygen. In such a situation, the crew would have a few days' of oxygen left in the station's air supply.
By the next day, though, the problem turned out not to exist. The Elektron system had gone offline for repairs August 25, but was fixed and operational before the crew went to bed. After the crew went to bed for the night, Russian mission controllers left, leaving NASA with no way to get an update on the situation.
The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported that Russian officials said NASA had "over-dramatized" the incident, and were seeking to find out why NASA called the generator failure a "potentially serious" event.
The incident took place one week after a real problem hit the station, when the main computer on Mir shut down. The shutdown took place as a Progress cargo spacecraft was docking with the station, requiring the crew to complete the docking manually.
The computer failure was found and corrected one day later, and the crew worked to bring the station's power back up. The station lost power when the computer failure shut down the attitude control systems, causing the station to drift and the solar panels to lose alignment with the Sun.
The extra work by the crew in the days after the Spektr repair spacewalk has meant Russian officials have pushed back the date of the next Mir spacewalk, scheduled for September 3, by two to three days. On that spacewalk Anatoly Solovyov and Michael Foale will venture outside the station to inspect the exterior of the Spektr module, looking for damage.