Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

Foale realized that with the inside hatch unable to close, they would have to find a hatch cover to push onto the module’s open mouth from the outside.

Each of the four modules attached to the node originally came with a circular lid, vaguely resembling a garbage can lid, which sealed the hatch from the outside. All four of the lids were now strapped to spots on the node walls. They came in two sizes, heavy and light. Lazutkin reached for a heavy lid, but it was tied down by a half-dozen cloth strips, each of which, he realized, he would have to slash to free the hatch cover underneath. He simply didn’t have enough time to cut all the strips.

Instead Lazutkin reached for one of the lighter covers. It was secured to the node wall by a pair of cloth straps, both of which the slim Russian quickly severed with the knife.

Together both men lifted the lid and set it over the open hatch. The lid was originally held in place by a series of hooks spaced evenly around the hatch’s outer edges, and Lazutkin thought they would have to work this mechanism to seal the hatch. But the moment the two men affixed the cover to the open hatch, the pressure differential that foiled their earlier efforts now worked in their favor. The lid was sucked tightly into place.

Lazutkin wasn’t satisfied. He told Foale to support the hatch cover while he found the tool he needed to work the closing mechanism.

“Vasya,” Solovyov said, “what hatch are they closing in module O? The one that needs to be pushed out or pulled in?”

“Which one are you closing?” Tsibliyev yelled over at Lazutkin.

Lazutkin said something inaudible.

“The one that will be pushed toward the module,” said Tsibliyev.

“You mean the one that is part of the main module.”

“It’s like a lid that will be pressed on.”

“Understood. So you are putting on the lid? Do you have some knife? Can you unplug the cables?”

“Yes, we have closed it and with that the light indicating depressurization has turned off.”

At the NASA console Keith Zimmerman breathed a tiny sign of relief. This was the first good news he had heard. He scanned the telemetry on his screen, paying close attention to the pressure levels. If the damage was limited to Spektr, and Spektr’s hatch had been firmly sealed, the pressure should hold steady.

At 12:21 the Progress was over 300m away orbiting the station. The pressure was slowly coming up. Mission Control’s systems indicated that Mir was drifting. They asked: “What’s happening with SUD right now? Is it in the ‘indication’ mode?”

SUD referred to the station’s motion-control system; if it had entered indication mode, Mir was in free drift and thus unable to keep the solar arrays toward the sun.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll leave it.”

With the station in free drift, its remaining solar arrays were unable to track the sun and thus generate power. With no new power coming into the system, the existing onboard systems would slowly begin to drain what power was left in the station’s onboard batteries. It would take several hours for the batteries to drain altogether, longer if the crew shut down most of the station’s major systems. Solovyov, his eye already on the approaching end of the comm pass, began instructing Tsibliyev which systems to shut down, and in what order, in the event power levels began dropping while the station was out of contact with the ground.

“We are switching [off] all that is not vitally important,” Tsibliyev said.

“If you have real trouble with SEP” – SEP referred to power levels remaining in the batteries – “the priorities will be the following: first switch off the Elektron, and only in the last moment [switch off] Vozdukh.” The Vozdukh carbon dioxide scrubber was the last thing Solovyov wanted turned off, since the station was already running low on the replacement LiOH canisters.

“Elektron is switched off right now,” said Tsibliyev.

“You should be fine with SEP. Just try to save it, but I don’t think you will be anywhere near to switching off Vozdukh.”

“We’ll be watching the pressure gauge.”

“What’s the temperature right now?”

“It’s quite chilly.”

“You should give [the pressure] time to stabilize.”

“I didn’t get you.”

“The pressure has to stabilize.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the pressure right now?”

“689 and holding.”

The enormity of what had happened overcame Tsibliyev for a moment. “It’s so frustrating, Vladimir Aleexevich,” he blurted out. “It’s a nightmare.”

“That’s all right, Vasily,” replies Solovyov, trying to keep his commander focused. Albertas Versekis, a docking specialist, joined Solovyov at his console. “Now tell Albert chronologically what was happening with the Progress.”

“Everything was going as planned. We were thinking that we should give it some more space for acceleration. We ended up not doing it.”

“All right.”

“I started to put down the lateral velocity. It started to sink down. And then there was permanent braking—”

“Were you braking?”

“Yes, and I was trying to bring it down. I was holding it tightly with my hand to make sure that it passed away from the solar panel. It indeed passed on the side, but then it slightly bent to the left and punched the top solar panel of module O with the needle. Then it touched the attachable cold radiator with its top solar panel on the right side.”

“Did it damage it?”

“Yes, a bit. However it bounced back immediately. It seems the speed was not that great at that moment, and we probably did not have enough energy to brake [the Progress].”

“Got you.”

And then the pass was over. It was 12:42.

The crew were reunited. Foale and Lazutkin smiled but Tsibliyev was silent and dazed. While they waited for the next communications pass, they speculated as to whether the contact between Foale and Tsibliyev had caused the collision. Lazutkin:

“Before Michael hit Vasily with his foot, the Progress was flying straight toward Spektr, its back end pointing forward. [Vasily] took his hand off the controls, and the ship changed its position. As soon as Michael hit Vasily’s hand, [the ship] moved, and it hit Spektr with its side. If the ship had continued flying the way it was flying, it might have been much worse. It would have hit with the sharp edge of the rear, rather than the blunt edge of the side.”

Subsequent examination of the videotape did not show any change in the path of the Progress. Tsibliyev concluded:

“The fact is little things contributed to what happened and we had a collision, that was one of the little things.”

They needed to get the solar arrays pointed back toward the sun. The station was in a slow roll and they needed to stop this. Because the solar arrays were misaligned, the station was running off stored power in the batteries. Four minutes before the next communications pass, the lights went out in the base block, then the rest of the lights went out and the gyrodynes powered down. Their thrusters couldn’t fire without power.

When Foale suggested using the thrusters on Soyuz to stop the spin, Mission Control gave permission to try. It was difficult to calculate the thruster firings. Tsibliyev:

“When we understood all this, and Michael had made his drawings, it turned out we had to make these very short impulse [firings]. We tried to explain it to the TsUP, but the [comm] passes were so short we couldn’t. So the TsUP said, ‘Okay, guys, you try it, let’s see what happens, because we have to do something.’”

At the end of the communications pass, they were on their own.

“We can do this, Vasily,” Foale urged Tsibliyev. The commander looked skeptical.