|
walls; the large-diameter section has a brown floor and yellow walls. Both sections have white ceilings with fluorescent lighting. The exercise area of Mir is also a theater with equipment for watching videocassettes and listening to music while exercising.[1] The Mir veloergometer exercise bike) can retract into the floor. There is also a treadmill/running track. Mir’s “sick bay” is a cabinet located in the frustum linking the large- and small-diameter sections of the living compartment, near the exercise area. Mir’s control console faces the |
forward docking unit, as on earlier DOS-type Salyuts. Two television screens permit face-to-face communications with the TsUP. Four more, arranged in pairs on either side of the hatch separating the living compartment from the multiport docking unit, permit monitoring of the modules attached to the multiport node (one screen per module). Different fates have been proposed for Mir over the past several years. At one time, a Buran space shuttle was to have delivered a new base block in 1992. Buran would have used a manipulator arm to pluck free the add-on modules on the existing |
base block and dock them to the new one. The old base block would then have been returned to Earth in Buran. According to Yuri Antoshechkin, Deputy Flight Director for Mir Systems, Mir will host its last crew in 1997, by which time its base block will have been in orbit for eleven years (more than twice as long as originally planned). It will continue flight in unmanned mode for a further year, serving as an experiment platform for a solar dynamic power system jointly developed by the U.S. and Russia. The station may then be deorbited over a preselected area of the Pacific Ocean, as was done with several of the Salyut stations.[2] |
2.9.3 Mir Career to Date
Changes in the configuration of the Mir station have included dockings by new modules; assembly of new components; dockings by Soyuz-T, Soyuz-TM, Progress, and Progress-M spacecraft; and Soyuz-TM transfers from port to port. The icons on the following pages depict these changes. Aligned horizontally with each icon are names (arranged to match icon positions) of spacecraft and station modules depicted and the inclusive dates of the configuration. The Mir station is left in the same orientation (forward end left) throughout this section because it did not rotate during port transfers (as did Salyut 6 and Salyut 7). In later combinations in this section, Kvant sprouts an inclined bar, which is later capped with a small rectangle. This represents the Sofora girder and subsequent addition of the VDU thruster unit atop Sofora. The text blocks cover important hardware-related events, such as anomalies and EVAs. Refer to figure 2-10 for key to icons. For more information on Soyuz-T, Progress, Soyuz-TM, and Progress-M vehicles mentioned, see section 1.12.3.4, 1.10.4.4, 1.13.3, and 1.11.3. For more information on Kvant, Kvant 2, Kristall, and the Kvant FSU, see sections 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8.1.
|
Mir | February 19-March 15, 1986 | |
| Mir launch. Salyut 7/Cosmos 1686 remained in orbit while Mir was launched. Because it was a ton heavier than its precursors, Mir reached an initial mean altitude of only 235 km. It was maneuvered using its main engines to a mean altitude of 330 km within a few days. Mir launch time was set by the need to match planes with the Salyut 7/Cosmos 1686 complex for the planned transfer by Soyuz-T 15 from Mir to the older station. | |||
2.9.3.1 Mir Principal Expedition 1 (Salyut 7 Principal Expedition 6)
Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov
Crew code name—Mayak
Soyuz-T 15, March 13-July 16, 1986
73 days on Mir
Kizim and Solovyov stayed aboard Mir in two stints (52 days and 21 days) separated by a visit to Salyut 7 (51 days).
Total time in space was 124 days.
