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Mir Docking Mission A Success; Spektr Leak Detected

The shuttle Atlantis completed its Mir docking mission earlier this month, exchanging crew members and supplies with the Russian space station, although the highlight of the mission may have come shortly after the shuttle undocked from the station.
     Crews on both Atlantis and Mir photographed evidence of a possible leak in the Spektr module near the base of the damaged solar panel October 3. With the shuttle undocked and stationed just 80 meters (250 feet) from the damaged module, the Mir crew pumped air into the module, flushing some debris through a hole in the module into space, where it was photographed.
     The air-pumping experiment was performed twice. The first time a small cloud of debris was noticed and photographed by the Atlantis crew. On the second attempt only a single piece was seen escaping from the hole.
     The base of the damaged solar panel had been suspected as one location of the hole which depressurized the Spektr module after a June 25 collision with a cargo module, but no leak was noticed in a spacewalk last month outside the module by Anatoly Solovyov and Michael Foale. The exact location of the leak will not be pinpointed until a detailed analysis of the images taken during the leak tests is performed.
     The discovery capped a successful docking mission between the shuttle and Mir, the seventh such docking mission since mid-1995. The shuttle brought several tons of supplies, including food, water, equipment, and a new computer system, to the station.
     The docking mission, STS-86, also brought to an end astronaut Michael Foale's four-month stay on the aging space station. Foale, who endured the Spektr depressurization, computer failures, and other problems, was replaced on the station by David Wolf. Wolf will spend four months on the station and will be replaced by Andy Thomas, the last American to stay on Mir.
     The docking mission also included a joint American-Russian spacewalk outside the station, when Scott Parazynski and Vladimir Titov retrieved experiments attached to the station on another shuttle mission 18 months ago and also left behind parts for any future Mir repairs. Other than a minor problem with Parazynski's tether, the five-hour walk, staged from the shuttle, went well.
     Atlantis returned to Earth with a 5:55pm EDT landing Monday, October 6. The landing was delayed one day when cloudy skies prevented a landing as scheduled on Sunday evening.

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