Jan 9 1998
From The Space Library
The two Russian crew members of the Mir space station completed a record-breaking spacewalk. Commander Anatoly Y. Solovyev and Pavel V. Vinogradov dismantled and retrieved in record time the Kristall module's optical-monitoring equipment made by the United States. The scheduled 6-hour spacewalk took only 3 hours and 8 minutes. However, it was unclear whether the cosmonauts had been able to repair a leaky hatch. The problem was not with the rubber sealing, as Russian ground control had suspected, but rather with a malfunctioning lock that was preventing the hatch from sealing hermetically. The cosmonauts activated 10 reserve locks and pumped air into the airlock, planning to monitor the hatch for leaks over the next 24 hours. The spacewalk was Commander Solovyev's 16th in five flights over 10 years. He had spent more than 70 hours in free space, more than any other person had accrued.
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