Bumpy Landing May Be Sign for Mir Crew

Two cosmonauts ended one of the most troubled missions in the history of space exploration Thursday when their Soyuz capsule thumped down onto the steppes of Kazakhstan with a bone-jarring bounce.

But more bumps and bruises may lie ahead for former Mir space station commander Vasily Tsibliyev and flight engineer Alexander Lazutkin as politicians and space officials hunt for culprits in the costly string of mishaps that marked the cosmonauts’ six-month mission.

President Boris N. Yeltsin observed during a visit to the Khrunichev space center last week that “a human factor, not equipment,” appeared to be responsible for a devastating June 25 accident aboard Mir.

Before Tsibliyev and Lazutkin had even taken off their spacesuits after returning to Earth on Thursday afternoon, a senior official at Mission Control here was exonerating Russian technology in the crash of a supply craft into Mir seven weeks ago.

Tsibliyev was practicing a manual docking procedure with the unmanned Progress cargo capsule when it overshot its portal and crashed into the Spektr research module, puncturing and depressurizing the module, which was used by NASA astronauts aboard Mir.

Space agency officials have disclosed privately that Tsibliyev failed to take into account more than a ton of garbage loaded onto the supply ship while calculating when to slow the approaching capsule during the maneuver.

“We have noted not one single fault in the systems of either Mir or Progress during the collision,” Mission Control Deputy Director Viktor Blagov told reporters. “The logical conclusion follows that technology was not at fault.”

Yeltsin’s top aeronautics advisor was quick to assert that there will be no precipitous assigning of blame for the costly accident, insisting that a full investigation will be carried out.

“We have jettisoned the ideology of looking for a scapegoat,” Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, a former air force chief of the Soviet Union and until recently head of the national carrier Aeroflot, was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency.

But a witch hunt is being predicted by Russian media.

“It is clear that under these tense circumstances it is much better to blame all the breakdowns and failures on the ‘human factor’ and by no means admit that the station is on its last legs,” the feisty daily Moskovsky Komsomolets observed before the cosmonauts’ return Thursday.

The atmosphere at Mission Control was palpably strained as Tsibliyev’s ill-fated term as Mir commander drew to a close. When the cosmonauts broke several minutes of radio silence to report that they had landed safely, the applause of Russian Space Agency officials was more relief than rejoicing.

Despite the problems, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration continued to put a brave face on joint use of the Mir station by keeping U.S. astronaut Michael Foale aboard until the space shuttle Atlantis goes to get him in late September.

Foale has been credited by his Russian space comrades with a swift and calm reaction to the June crash. Foale helped Lazutkin sever more than a dozen cables that were blocking the open portal between Mir’s main cabin and Spektr, so the hatch could be closed and air pressure maintained in the rest of the space station.

Since that accident cut 40% of the station’s power capacity, Mir has been orbiting without normal life-support systems such as climate control, oxygen generation, water reprocessing and sufficient light.

More than $17 million has already been spent in efforts to repair the damage, Russian Space Agency Director Yuri Koptiev told journalists.

Other officials note that NASA is likely to reduce its payment to Russia for joint use of the Mir space station because the accident destroyed much of the equipment and research data that Foale had stored in Spektr. The U.S. government has pledged more than $470 million in support to the Russian space program to use Mir as a training facility as astronauts prepare for the expected 1999 launch of the Alpha International Space Station.

The European Space Agency will also withhold millions in payment for a French astronaut’s planned trip to Mir this month, which had to be canceled because of the accident.

“I am happy this half-year is behind us now,” said a subdued Sigmund Jaehn, the European agency liaison at Mission Control, after Tsibliyev and Lazutkin landed.

“Let’s hope that everything that went wrong is leaving with us,” Lazutkin said before leaving Mir.

The returned cosmonauts were being examined by doctors Thursday. Meanwhile, a replacement crew that arrived on Mir a week ago was planning an inspection of the crash damage with Foale from within the space station’s escape capsule.

A spacewalk to begin repairs is expected Wednesday.