An unmanned Progress supply module flew off course during a docking maneuver and struck the Mir space station on June 25, depressurizing the Spektr module and resulting in a 50 percent power loss for the station.
     Progress M-34, loaded with garbage from the station, was being used to test remote docking procedures when it flew off course at around 5:20am EDT (0920 UT). The crew was unable to stop the module before it struck a solar panel attached to Spektr, tearing a hole 30-40 cm across in it.
     The Progress then bounced off the module itself, creating a hull breach about 2-3 cm in diameter. The hole in the module allowed air to escape from inside Spektr.
     The three-man crew on Mir, including American astronaut Michael Foale, closed the hatch to Spektr, sealing it off from the rest of the station to prevent further loss of air pressure on the station. None of the crew was injured in the accident.
     However, to seal the hatch to Spektr required disconnecting power cables that linked the solar panels attached to Mir to the rest of the station. This loss of electrical power from Spektr's panels cut the station's total power in half.
     The loss of power forced the shutdown of a number of key systems on the station, including the oxygen generators and carbon dioxide scrubbers and the gyrodynes, used to keep Mir in the proper attitude. As the situation came under control later by the weekend, though, those systems were gradually restored.
     "The situation on Mir is completely under the control of mission control and the crew," said mission controller Vladimir Solovyov.
     The Progress was moved to a safe distance from the station. Although mission controllers planned to deorbit the spacecraft late last week, the vehicle remains in orbit as additional tests are conducted with it. At last report, engineers believed that the spacecraft may have been overloaded with garbage, making the spacecraft more difficult to control and contributing to the accident.
     The loss of Spektr was a major setback for Foale, who conducted a number of experiments in the module and used it as his living quarters. He left behind a number of personal items, from clothing to toothbrushes, in the module when it was sealed off.
     When asked by a NASA official at Russian mission control how he was doing after the accident, Foale said, "Great... as great as you can be without all of your stuff."
     "It's all over now and I'm glad we're getting it all together again," he said.

Russian and American engineers have designed a plan to restore power from the damaged Spektr module using an untried and risky "internal spacewalk" from within the space station itself.
     Under the proposed repair plan, one or both Russian cosmonauts would replace the hatch to the Spektr module with a new version that would allow electrical connectors to pass through it, enabling power to be routed from the solar panels attached to Spektr back to the rest of the station.
     The cosmonauts would work in the main node of the station, which connects Spektr, the Mir core module, and three other modules on the station. The node would be sealed off from the other modules and depressurized during the repair.
     American astronaut Michael Foale would wait in the Soyuz module during the repair, should anything happen during the repairs that would require an immediate evacuation from the station.
     "Guys, it seems you will have to make a sortie to the Spektr module," said cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev from Russian mission control on Friday. "And you, Mike, if this happens, will have to sit in the escape capsule."
     The crew was skeptical about the prospects of a repair mission when first told about it. "It's very problematic," one of them was heard replying to Krikalev.
     "I have never done this kind of work," said Mir commander Vasily Tsibliev. "Without training, it will not be possible to do this job."
     "We will help you do all the jobs," Vladimir Solovyov replied from mission control.
     A Progress module carrying repair equipment and replacement supplies is scheduled for launch from Baikonur on July 5. Progress M-35 had already been scheduled for launch last Friday, but was delayed to give time to round up the equipment needed to conduct the repairs.
     While the spacewalk, if successful, will restore power to the station from up to three of the four solar panels attached to Spektr, it is unlikely the breech in the hull of the module will be repaired any time in the foreseeable future.
     "It's not likely we'll be able to regain access to the module itself or repressurize it in the near future," said Frank Culbertson, NASA's shuttle-Mir program manager, said, "although I'm sure they'll look at that at some time, when it's appropriate."
     "I think it is going to be a very difficult job,'' he said. "I don't think you can take it lightly. It's going to be interesting for the world to watch this."

Last Wednesday's collision between an unmanned Progress supply module and the Mir space station has prompted a key member of Congress to call for a full review of the safety of the station before any additional Americans are allowed to stay there.
     Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Science Committee, called on NASA to voluntarily comply with legislation already passed by the House that would require a full safety review of Mir before additional Americans go to the station.
     "I, for one, can no longer sit idly by as mishap after mishap occurs while we continue to plan the next shuttle mission to Mir hoping for, but not really expecting, the mission will succeed without a potentially life-threatening situation," he said.
     Language in the Civilian Space Authorization Act, passed earlier this year by the House of Representatives, would require a full safety review before the joint Mir missions could continue. That bill has not been passed by the Senate yet.
     "The review should be initiated immediately and be concluded in advance of any decision to send the STS-86 crew to Mir as scheduled for September," Sensenbrenner said.
     White House spokesman Mike McCurry said that President Clinton remained "committed to the program".
     Russia's ability to remain as reliable partners in the International Space Station program may also be questioned because of this incident. "Congress certainly will be concerned about Mike Foale's safety," said Congressional space policy analyst Marcia Smith, "and add to concern about whether Russia is a viable partner for the new International Space Station."

The collision between Mir and Progress M-34 last week was the latest in a series of problems to strike the aging space station, leading some to question whether the station was truly safe for its crew.
     At the same time the world's attention was drawn to the collision, new information regarding the seriousness of last February's fire on Mir came to light which indicated the fire was far worse than originally reported.
     Astronaut Jerry Linenger, who had been on Mir at the time of the February 23 fire, reported that the fire burned for 15 minutes, not 90 seconds as originally reported, and flames several feet long blocked access to one of the Soyuz capsules attached to the station.
     February's fire started when a lithium perchlorate candle, burned to generate supplemental oxygen on the station, cracked, shooting flames out of its canister.
     "The flame was maybe 2 feet flying out of this thing," Linenger told the Associated Press. "It looked like sparklers going off and molten metal flying... It was a hot fire."
     Linenger said the station's fire extinguishers could not directly put out the flames, so they instead used them to keep the hull around the burning canister from burning and waited until the fire burned itself out.
     During Linenger's stay on Mir he and his Russian crewmates also had to deal with oxygen generators which broke down and had to be replaced, carbon dioxide scrubbers which also broke down, and leaks in a cooling system which caused the temperature in the station to rise as high as 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in some modules.
     The Progress collision was also not the first time the station had a close call with a cargo spacecraft. In March a Progress spacecraft missed the station during an automated docking attempt, coming close to but not hitting Mir.
     "It looked like it was coming very fast and it looked like it was coming directly at us," Linenger recalled.
     Some experts on Mir and the Russian space program, such as analyst James Oberg, now believe the station is unsafe for habitation and should be abandoned.
     If the station is abandoned, though, according to one Russian official, they would lose control over the station and it could reenter "unpredictably" within one month.

Most Americans probably heard about the Mir accident on the morning news Wednesday, June 25, a few hours after the accident. Those who followed the news of the accident that day at work or school using one of the online news services found a wide range of quality in the coverage of the accident.
     As usual, Florida Today's Space Online (http://www.flatoday.com/space/today/) did an excellent job with their coverage of the incident, combining wire reports with articles by their own reporters. In the following days they provided archives of previous days' coverage in addition to new reports.
     CNN Interactive (http://www.cnn.com)/ also provided extensive coverage, updating their stories several times a day and providing access to previous reports. In addition, they provided some additional services, such as special message area devoted to the accident so people could discuss the incident and its consequences, and also provided live online chats with people like Marcia Smith, a space policy analyst.
     ABCNews.Com (http://www.abcnews.com/) also did a credible job, providing stories, background information, and some commentary, but not to the same level as Florida Today or CNN. FOX News (http://www.foxnews.com/) provided no original content of its own but did have an extensive archive of Reuters and AP wire stories on the accident. CBS's Up to the Minute (http://uttm.com/) provided good updates in its "Space Space" section by reporter Bill Harwood. USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/) did a reasonable job, although finding older versions of reports was difficult.
     MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.com/), though, did not meet expectations. Although providing commentary by veteran space reporter Jay Barbree and a viewers' poll on whether the station should be abandoned, the overall quality of the reports were not as high as the other services. The reports included such questionable statements like "one or more of the modules were sealed off", implying that additional modules on Mir had been closed off, which was never the case, and never reported as such by the other news services. A lack of archives of previous versions of the articles also hurt their coverage.
     MSNBC's worst gaffe, though, was in a statement by reporter Rob Reynolds. In an audio segment included in an article, Reynolds claimed the Soyuz module was 11 years old - as old as the Mir core module. "If Mir is 11 years old, well so is the Soyuz, and we don't for sure what effect those 11 years of space has had on that capsule when it tries to reenter," he said.
     Compounding matters, he added, "I don't like to speculate but it may be that there are some reasons, good reasons for staying up there, maybe even better to stay than to come down, if you know what I mean."
     When informed of the major error on Saturday by SpaceViews, an MSNBC editor responded on Monday that the "offending clip" had been removed. However, as of Tuesday morning, the clip was still available and linked to their main Mir story page. If you have Real Audio installed on your computer you can listen in at http://www.msnbc.com/news/ramfiles/0627reynolds5.ram. The full MSNBC story is online at http://www.msnbc.com/news/82420.asp.

In what was described by one official as "one of the most successful flybys" ever, NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft flew by the asteroid Mathilde Friday, June 27, returning hundreds of images that have surprised scientists.
     The images returned by NEAR show that Mathilde, a C-class asteroid 52 km (33 mi.) in diameter, is darker, lighter, and more heavily cratered than expected.
     NEAR images showed at least five craters larger than 20 km (12 mi.) on Mathilde's surface, leading some to wonder how the asteroid managed to stay together after such a heavy bombardment. "The degree to which the asteroid has been battered is amazing," said Cornell University professor Joseph Veverka. "At first glance there are more huge craters than there is asteroid."
     As a carbonaceous C-class asteroid, astronomers expected the asteroid to have a dark surface, but did not expect the asteroid to be as uniformly black and colorless as NEAR revealed. "This global blandness is an important clue telling us that asteroids such as Mathilde are made of the same dark, black rock throughout since none of the craters, which are punched deep into the asteroid, show evidence of any other kind of rock," Veverka said.
     Researchers hope to combine this information with the mass and density of the asteroid to find clues how it formed. According to Dr. Don Yeomans of JPL, "Preliminary results suggest that Mathilde is much less dense than we had thought." Asteroids such as Mathilde may consist of primitive building blocks left over from the formation of the solar system.
     The flyby of Mathilde was not a planned part of the mission, but was added when the flight plan to its main destination, the asteroid 433 Eros, took it close to Mathilde. Because NEAR was twice as far from the Sun as it will be for Eros, it had less power available from its solar panels, and thus only its camera was used during the flyby.
     "The Mathilde encounter was one of the most successful flybys of all time," said mission director Robert Farquhar. "We got images that were far better than we thought possible, especially since the spacecraft was not designed for a fast flyby."
     The images were the first science results from any spacecraft in the Discovery program of low-cost space science missions. NEAR was the first Discovery class mission, having been launched in February 1996.
     "It's today that the Discovery Program really begins," said Dr. Wesley Huntress, NASA associate administrator for the Office of Space Science, at a June 30 press conference.
     The second spacecraft in the Discovery program, Mars Pathfinder, will land on the planet this Friday. A third, Lunar Prospector, is scheduled for a September launch.

Despite a dismal forecast that called for only a ten percent chance of acceptable launch conditions, the shuttle Columbia launched on July 1 over a half-hour earlier than planned on a reflight of a 16-day microgravity science mission.
     Columbia lifted off at 2:02pm EDT (1802 UT), 35 minutes earlier than the previously scheduled launch time of 2:37pm EDT. No problems were reported with the launch.
     On June 30 shuttle managers moved the launch time up from 2:37pm to 1:50pm in an effort to beat out the formation of heavy thunderstorms predicted for that afternoon and for much of the rest of the week.
     Showers passed through the space center a couple hours before launch, but conditions cleared in time for launch. The launch took place 12 minutes late to provide time for last-minute checks of the weather conditions.
     STS-94 is a reflight of April's STS-83 mission, which was forced to return to Earth just four days into its 16-day mission when one of the three fuel cells on the spacecraft failed. The mission will conduct dozens of experiments on the effects of weightlessness on items from plants to materials to combustion.
     "We have the opportunity to refly a flight that had to come home early and it's just worked out magnificently," said mission commander Jim Halsell.
     The fast turnaround of Columbia set a post-Challenger record for the fastest processing of a shuttle between missions.

A Russian Proton rocket launched seven Iridium satellites June 18 while an Ariane 4 launched a new communications satellite for Intelsat a week later.
     The Proton launched from Baikonur at 10:02am EDT (1402 UT) on June 18. Its payload of seven Iridium satellites was successfully placed into orbit, according to Russian reports.
     The launch was the second in as many months for Iridium. In May, a Delta 2 places the first five satellites into orbit with a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Another Delta launch of 5 Iridium satellite is planned for July.
     When complete, Iridium will have 66 satellites in orbit that will be able to provide cellular phone communication between almost any two points on the Earth. The Iridium constellation should be complete by late 1998.
     An Ariane 44P launched Intelsat 802 at 7:44pm EDT (2344 UT) June 25 from Kourou, French Guiana. The communications satellite will take up a slot in geosynchronous orbit formerly used by an older Intelsat.
     Intelsat 802 will provide voice, data, and video communications throughout the Pacific Rim.

Speculation is increasing that former astronaut and current U.S. Senator John Glenn may fly on a future shuttle mission, ostensibly to investigate the effects of space on the aging process.
     "NASA has discussed the idea with the senator, and we are giving it further consideration," NASA spokesman Michael Braukus said.
     Glenn, who will turn 76 in July, had already announced plans to retire from the Senate and not run for reelection in 1998. Glenn has repeatedly expressed an interest in flying in space again to see what effects the weightless environment in orbit would have on aging.
     Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth when he made three orbits on the Mercury 6 mission on February 20, 1962. That mission was Glenn's only trip into space.
     For Glenn to fly again would require a change in NASA policy that currently prohibits civilians -- those not members of the astronaut corps or payload specialists -- from flying on the shuttle. The policy was enacted after the Challenger accident, which killed teacher Christa McAuliffe.
     A second trip into space for Glenn "would certainly be inspiring for a lot of people," said American University professor Richard Berendzen.

Late-Breaking Pathfinder Update: Mars Pathfinder may find the Martian atmosphere to be dustier and windier than expected when it lands on the Red Planet this Friday. Image of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope June 27 show a dust storm in progress in Valles Marineris, just 1000 km (600 mi.) south of the Pathfinder landing site. "Unless the dust storm were to evolve into a massive, global event, its effects on the Pathfinder mission should be minimal," said Steve Lee of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the scientists who analysed the Hubble images, on July 1. The storm may add enough dust to the sky, though, to make the sky appear pink in the first Mars Pathfinder images.

Space Junk Disables Japanese Satellite: A Japanese Earth-observing satellite was hit and disabled by a piece of space junk, according to reports on June 30. A solar panel on the ADEOS (ADvanced Earth Observing Satellite) spacecraft was hit by an unidentified piece of space junk, disabling its power supply. The spacecraft has limited power from batteries, but those reportedly will soon run out and cannot be recharged. The $500-million satellite was launched last year to study the atmosphere, climate, and oceans, and including a NASA instrument to measure ozone levels in the atmosphere. NASDA, the Japanese space agency, says a replacement for ADEOS will likely not be ready for launch before the summer of 1999. [Editor's Note: see the article in the next section on the ORION proposal as one method of reducing the amount of orbital debris.]

Obituary: Jurgen Rahe, the Science Program Director for Solar System Exploration at NASA Headquarters, was killed June 18. He died when a large tree fell on his car during a heavy thunderstorm while he was driving near his suburban Maryland home. Rahe, a native of Germany, had been an astronomy professor in Germany and a staff scientist at JPL before moving to NASA Headquarters in 1989. His responsibilities included the science programs for the Galileo and Cassini missions as well as the Discovery class of missions, which include NEAR and Mars Pathfinder. "His legacy to the exploration of space is large," said NASA associate administrator Wesley Huntress, "and I like to think that Jurgen's ideas, hopes, and dreams are aboard many of the spacecraft now headed to the frontiers of our Solar System."

Station Debated in Senate Hearing: A Senate hearing on June 18 focused on the International Space Station and whether Russia should continue to have a role in the station. The hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space was attended by three Republicans, who questioned NASA administrator Dan Goldin on reports of budget overruns on the station by Boeing. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) suggested legislation be passed capping the amount of money to be spent on the station, although another analyst pointed out a policy cap already exists on space station spending. Meanwhile, retiring Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-AR) said he will introduce an amendment later this year to kill the space station program.

In Brief: Lockheed Martin has been selected to build a solar x-ray imager to be used on future GOES weather satellites. The imager should be able to provide more advanced warning of solar flares and storms, an important consideration as the Sun enters a period of greater activity over the next several years... Researchers from NASA Ames and Carnegie Mellon University have started tests in Chile of Nomad, an advanced rover that is able to navigate and perform scientific tasks autonomously. The rover is being tested in Chile's cold, dry Atacama Desert, which has an environment that shares key characteristics with the Moon and Mars... Another rover, Sojourner, scheduled to start traversing the Martian terrain on Friday, has been immortalized in the form of a toy by Mattel. The "Hot Wheels JPL Sojourner Mars Rover Action Pack Set" features a model of Sojourner, compete with the rover's distinctive six-wheel articulated suspension. It's being hailed as another example of the success of JPL's technology transfer program...