Mir’s Oxygen Generator Breaks

The trouble-plagued Mir space station was reported to be stable Tuesday but suffered a mechanical problem with an oxygen generator, and the Russian-U.S. crew began training for the tricky spacewalk inside the damaged research module.

An oxygen-generating system had to be shut down because a faulty valve was causing it to overheat, Frank Culbertson, director of NASA’s Shuttle-Mir program, said at a news conference in Houston. The crew was given permission to use three solid-fuel canisters to produce oxygen until the valve can be fixed.

On Feb. 23, one of the canisters burst into flame, spewing smoke into the space station.

Despite the latest glitch, Russian and American officials said life support systems aboard Mir are stable and the crew is recovering from the exhaustion and stress of last week’s accident. Mir was rammed by an unmanned cargo vessel during a docking maneuver.