Apr 1 1998
From The Space Library
In a spacewalk lasting nearly 7 hours, Mir cosmonauts failed to stabilize the solar panel damaged in a collision in 1997. Russian space officials had postponed this spacewalk from 3 March, when the crew had been unable to unlock the hatch, breaking three wrenches in their attempts. Russian Space Agency cosmonauts, Kazakh Talgat A. Musabayev and Russian Nikolai M. Budarin, spent most of the spacewalk setting up a handrail, left outside the space station by the previous crew.
After struggling to unfold and assemble the handrail, the pair only had enough time to install one of two footrests. The cosmonauts returned to Mir after the elapse of 6 hours and 40 minutes; their oxygen tanks only held approximately 7 hours of air. Russian Mission Control had intentionally turned off the audio system during most of the spacewalk. Officials said that Mission Control would no longer allow journalists to listen to radio traffic between Mission Control and spacewalkers, because reporters had become overly critical. Russian officials accused reporters of exaggerating problems on the space station, despite the fact that Mir had been operating relatively trouble free for several months before this spacewalk.
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a NASA satellite to study solar events that could endanger astronauts and spacecraft. The Small Explorer (SMEX) satellite program, under the management of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, had developed the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) satellite.
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