Amidst the serenity of space, for a moment he feared the worst. At 354 kilometers above sea level, the Progress M-34 cargo ship collided with the Mir station, both Russians, losing oxygen with three crew members on board.
Tension gripped heaven and earth on June 25, 1997. Progress, with 2.5 tons of food and equipment, was attempting to dock with Mir, but the cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliev misjudged the speed and trajectory of the ship.
About Tsibliev we spoke previously in FayerWayer: he is the owner of a curious record. We leave you the link here.
The collision was felt by all. In addition to Tsibliev, at the Russian station Mir were Alexander Lazutkin and the British-American Collin Mike Foale.
Progress weighed 7,200 kilograms and, as Space News recalls, it was the size of a school bus. By not responding properly to braking commands collided with a Mir solar panel, located in one of the Spektr research modules.
The module’s hull was ruptured. Air pressure and oxygen began to come out.
The coolness of the crew helped solve the accident in space
Foale retired to the Soyuz escape craft, complying with what he learned in training, but the Russians Tsibliev and Lazutkin remained to repair the station. Noticing, the British-American returned.
What would happen with them?
Tsibliev and Lazutkin put on their costumes and performed a spacewalk to repair damage to the Spektr module, reconnecting the power lines, while Foale handled the items from the station.
The Russians were able to seal the damaged module, avoiding further loss of air and oxygen pressure. But the Mir station had gone out of control, taking several days to stabilize.
They dodged the worst. Finally, Mir continued to operate until 2001, after 15 years in orbit, when it ended up out of orbit by the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The International Space Station began its era, which remains to this day.
Although Tsibliev was initially targeted, it was later understood that the entire maneuver was being carried out manually. since the Russians had not paid for an automatic program. It was even said that he would have suffered a cardiovascular problem. This generated criticism and further accelerated Mir’s passage to the International Space Station.