A NEW FIX-IT CREW CHECKS IN ABOARD MIR

By Dick Thompson

No repairmen ever had so much riding on a service call as the two cosmonauts dispatched last week to fix Russia's crippled Mir space station. Commander Anatoli Solovyev, 49, and engineer Pavel Vinogradov, 43, must not only restore the station as a working orbital laboratory but also reassure their U.S. partners that Mir is safe enough to let Americans continue visiting it.

That won't be easy. Even as they approached Mir, the automatic docking system failed, forcing the cosmonauts to complete the linkup manually. Worse, the Russian Space Agency concluded that it won't be possible to fix Mir's broken oxygen generator until a key replacement part is brought up by the U.S. space shuttle next month, forcing the crew--temporarily up to five men last week--to continue burning oxygen-generating chemical "candles."

Still, the new cosmonauts were nothing if not confident. Their first tasks are to boost the station's electric power and reopen Mir's damaged Spektr module, site of U.S. astronaut Michael Foale's experiments. Ever since an errant Progress supply capsule slammed into it in June, Spektr has been completely sealed off and the cables to its solar panels severed, cutting Mir's electric power in half.

Solovyev, a veteran of four missions to Mir, and Vinogradov, a space rookie, are slated to begin undoing the damage next week with a tricky "internal" space walk. Though they've rehearsed the zero-G procedure in water tanks, they could face unexpected problems when they open Spektr's hatch--from, say, sharp-edged shards of metal and glass floating in the module since the rapid depressurization.

After they install a new hatch that was flown to Mir last month, Solovyev will squeeze into Spektr to look for the cables from its solar panels so they can be reconnected to the Mir power system. But it will be a hunt in the dark, with the only light coming from a miner's type lamp on Solovyev's helmet and a flashlight held by Vinogradov in the airlock behind him.

Even if all this succeeds, Spektr can't be used until the cosmonauts patch up the damage to its skin. On Sept. 3 Solovyev and Vinogradov are booked for a second walk--this one outside Mir--during which they'll crawl around the module looking for any punctures, which they hope to seal with rubbery "hermetic patches." Spektr can then be repressurized.

That would relieve NASA of a big headache. Ever since the 11-year-old Mir was hit by its current plague of mishaps--onboard fires, oxygen shutdowns, a leaking cooling system, dangerous spins, power brownouts--U.S. space officials have been under pressure to stop putting astronauts aboard, a privilege costing NASA about $472 million over five years. These funds have helped bail out the strapped Russian Space Agency, which NASA wants to keep as a major player in the upcoming International Space Station. But the Russian-American partnership is in trouble on Capitol Hill, and only last week presidential science adviser John Gibbons re-emphasized that a decision to send Foale's replacement up in late September won't be made until it's clear Mir has enough electricity for the slate of microgravity experiments planned by NASA. Says Gibbons: "If they can't get the power up, then [sending another American] is a real question."

Understandably, Foale's original crewmates, Vasili Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin, probably won't be too sad about leaving Mir later this week. But even on Earth, their mission may continue to haunt them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin last week raised "the human factor" as the likely source of Mir's troubles. And adding to Tsibliyev's public embarrassment, Russian officials disclosed that because he was guiding Progress when it plowed into Spektr, he may not get his full flight bonus for his difficult six months in space.

--With reporting by Andrew Meier/Moscow

With reporting by ANDREW MEIER/MOSCOW