'Controlled' Mir re-entry promised

Illustration of Mir docked with the space shuttle Discovery

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian space officials say they are confident that the Mir space station can be brought to earth in an "organised" way.

Mir mission control flight director Vladimir Solovyev said he did not believe the unmanned craft would spiral out of control and plunge to earth, as some feared, after contact was lost with the troubled craft.

Ground controllers lost contact for nearly 20 hours before re-establishing communication on Tuesday.

Mission control spokesman Valery Lyndin said ground controllers had since managed to link up with the Mir three times.

He said the information received during the hook-ups showed that the station had not lost pressure.

Solovyov said the station's batteries had somehow lost nearly all their power, leaving too little energy for the Mir to communicate.

Controllers then switched off several systems so that more energy could be directed towards communicating with the ground.

REFERENCE Russia's Mir Space Station  • Timeline  • Cult 3-D Model  • Message board  • News search    VIDEO 2001: A Space Prophecy Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) More problems for Russia's ageing Mir Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

Recharging the batteries through the station's solar panels should take until Wednesday morning, Solovyov said. But he said it remained unclear what caused the power shortage.

Russian space agency officials had been tracking Mir with ground stations. NASA was also said to be tracking the station.

Solovyev admitted that a breakdown in communications was the most dangerous problem that could happen to Mir, but he said the space station would never fall to Earth out of control.

"The Mir space station will not fall down. Not tomorrow and not on New Year's Eve. It is in flight on the orbit which is 315-320 kilometres high. That is why I believe that we will find the means, we even already have it, as to how we will say 'goodbye' to the Mir space station in an organised and civilised way," Solovyev said.

He said it would take several days for specialists to fully analyse the incident to find out what happened.

A crew comprising cosmonauts Salizhan Sharipov and Pavel Vinogradov is currently completing training to go and join the station should it need it.

Mir is due to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean in late February (2000), but this requires carefully guiding the station out of orbit.

The loss of communication was the latest mishap for the nearly 15-year-old space station. Observers have been worried about the Mir's safety for a long time.

However, after a fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches, the Mir had been running relatively smoothly.

There have been careful preparations for its descent after a Soviet satellite crashed into northern Canada in 1978, causing the Soviet leadership major embarrassment. Nobody was hurt but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.

The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, scattering debris over western Australia. Again no-one was hurt.

And in 1991, fragments of the Soviet Salyut-7 space station, the Mir's predecessor, fell on Argentina's Andes Mountains near the Chilean border, inflicting no damage or injuries but generating fears worldwide.

CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty, The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

Russia restores contact with Mir
December 26, 2000
Pacific ditching for Mir in February
November 16, 2000
Russia plans to dump Mir space station
October 23, 2000
Future of Mir in doubt after cosmonauts return home
June 16, 2000

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