Mir Charges Solar Batteries After Computer Patchwork

Mir pointed toward the sun and recharged its solar batteries Thursday after the crew of the aging space station restarted guidance equipment incapacitated by a computer malfunction.

Nine of the 10 gyroscopes that orient the station were reactivated, and the crew was checking the 10th to determine whether it was working, the Mission Control press service announced.

Several important systems were temporarily lost during Sunday’s computer crash, the fourth in two months. The malfunction forced the crew to reduce power and oxygen as they reassembled another computer from spare parts.

The crew had planned to reconnect the electricity supply to the Priroda module, which had been without power since a collision with a cargo ship in June. But it had to delay the project because restarting the gyroscopes took longer than expected, Mission Control spokeswoman Irina Manshilina said.

The June collision, the most serious of recent accidents on the 11-year-old Mir, badly damaged the Spektr module, which has been sealed off. It also caused energy problems for the Priroda, one of six Mir modules.

Also on Thursday, U.S. astronaut Michael Foale observed beetles as part of his scientific work, and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov rerouted equipment cables so they could resume experiments, the Interfax news agency said.

Foale will return home on the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis, scheduled to blast off on Sept. 25.