Mir Crew Gearing Up For Crucial Repairs To Ruptured Module

Mir’s crew made an early night of it Thursday, gathering strength for Friday’s grueling mission to enter a ruptured module and restore the space station’s depleted power supply.

The two Russians and American astronaut Michael Foale - who usually work and sleep according to Moscow time - rearranging their schedule to allow for lengthy preparations before venturing into the damaged section of the Mir.

The whole process is expected to take about 15 hours.

After going to bed early Thursday, they were to rise shortly after 2 a.m. Moscow time (6 p.m. EDT Thursday) and spend the next 11 hours getting ready. That means eating breakfast, taking medical tests and finally climbing into the bulky, pressurized spacesuits that will protect them from the vacuum inside the banged-up Spektr module.

Then the tricky part begins.

Spektr was rammed and punctured during a June 25 collision with a cargo ship, forcing the crew to seal it off, disconnecting cables that attached its powerful solar panels to the rest of the station. Since then, Mir has only had about half of its normal power.

If the repair is successful, three of Spektr’s four panels will come back on line. Russians say the Mir will be back at 90 percent of its power; NASA estimates it at about 60 percent.

Once in their suits, the cosmonauts will seal off the passageway leading to the depressurized Spektr, open the hatch and take their first look inside.

They are not certain what they may find, but the interior is likely to pose hazards. Broken equipment or shards of glass from ruptured containers could tear a spacesuit. A cosmonaut could become entangled in loose cables or even his own lifeline.

In case of trouble, Foale will be stationed in the Soyuz escape capsule to assist.

Russian space officials said Thursday that Pavel Vinogradov - a rookie cosmonaut and the mission’s flight engineer - will be the one to enter the Spektr. He will work to reconnect 11 cables to the Spektr side of the hatch, while mission commander Anatoly Solovyov assists from the hatchway and reattaches power lines on the other side - perhaps an even more difficult task.

“They are going to make the connections with gloves,” Igor Goncharov, a deputy Mission Control chief, said Thursday. “If they find it tricky to do it with bulky gloves, they have special tools to help. The crew trained to do it both ways on the ground.”

If they have time, the cosmonauts will also film the interior and collect logbooks, computer disks and personal items belonging to Foale.

Altogether, space officials expect the repair mission to last a little over four hours, ending shortly after 5 p.m. Moscow time (9 a.m. EDT). But the team can stay longer if they like; they will have about seven hours’ supply of oxygen.