Colliding with Mir
Twenty-four years ago, today, a progress resupply module collided with the Russian Mir Space Station. What was meant to be a routine procedure ended up being anything but that. The Spektr module was damaged by the collision and with the hull of that module compromised, the station began to lose atmosphere.
Thankfully the two Russian cosmonauts and British-American Astronaut on the station were able to seal off the damaged module.
They would spend the next few days fighting power losses, a spinning station, and an increasing amount of condensation inside the Mir. This NASA photograph shows some of the damage to Mir. It was taken during STS-86 in September of 1997.
Mike Foale’s oral history interview that was part of the Shuttle-Mir history project gives us a firsthand account of just what it was like in the aftermath of the collision. After the initial collision and prepping the Soyuz capsule for an emergency return to Earth, the crew began to do what they could to mitigate the loss of atmosphere.
After a few minutes spent trying to get a hatch to seal off the damaged module, the crew was finally able to get a hatch in place. Foale recalls that “there is a leak on the other side of this’, so I knew at this point we had isolated the leak, because I could feel the hatch holding in and then the pressure stopped dropping in my ears. So I thought, “Hmm, I guess I’m not going home.”
“it’s a whole matter of adaptation, and I guess that’s the way my psychology works. In the space of five or ten minutes after an emergency, I will already be trying to make something positive out of what that situation has dealt me.” Mike Foale
Foale’s oral history is a great interview, with the conversation ranging from life in Russia at Star City in the late 1990s to the mission on Mir. One of the things I’m most excited about for future and current missions is the fact that astronauts and cosmonauts now have access to social media. They can share their experiences in real time, something that wasn’t possible twenty years ago.