Radio Contact Said Lost With Mir

Tuesday, December 26th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

MOSCOW (AP) â€” Russian Mission Control said Tuesday it had lost radio contact with the unmanned Mir space station, signaling new troubles for the accident-prone orbiting craft.

It was the latest apparent mishap for the nearly 15-year old space station, which the Russian government reluctantly had decided to bring down in a controlled descent in late February.

Mission Control lost track of the Mir after contacting it Monday at 6:40 p.m. (10:40 a.m. EST), said Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for Mission Control said. Several successive attempts to restore the link later Monday failed, but on Tuesday afternoon, Mission Control again managed to briefly link up with the Mir.

The hook-up was long enough to confirm that the station had not lost pressure, Lyndin said â€” dampening initial fears that the loss of communications could signal the station was spinning out of control and could crash to Earth.

But if ground controllers are unable to re-establish regular contact with the Mir, its solar panels would eventually lose alignment with the sun, and the power shortage would freeze its systems. The station would also rotate chaotically, making it hard for any emergency crew to dock and try to regain control.

``The hookup lasted for about seven minutes, and then communications with the Mir were lost again,'' Lyndin told The Associated Press. Ground controllers can establish a link with the Mir for about 15-20 minutes during each orbit around the Earth, which lasts about two hours.

``It's not clear yet what has caused the malfunction,'' Lyndin said, adding that ground controllers would continue trying to maintain regular contact with the Mir.

Yuri Semyonov, the chief of the state-controlled Energiya company, which built and has been running the Mir, said that even the brief restoration of radio contact was a hopeful sign. ``We will now try to figure out what happened,'' he said.

Normally, such communications problems are sparked by computer glitches. The lost of radio contact could signal a problem with the on-board computer.

Observers have been worried about the Mir's safety for a long time. However, after a terrifying fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches and breakdowns, the Mir has been running relatively smoothly this year.

The Mir had only one, 73-day manned mission this year. The crew returned safely in June, raising official optimism about the prospects of keeping it in orbit without a crew.

At the same time, Russian space officials said it was necessary to dump the Mir because experts could no longer guarantee the safety of its operation.

``We cannot continue this game ... which I call Russian roulette,'' Russian Aerospace Agency chief Yuri Koptev said in November, explaining the decision to discard the Mir. Many considered the decision a blow to Russian pride.

Calling for careful preparation for the Mir's descent, space officials recalled a Soviet satellite that crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.

The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, spreading debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.

In 1991, fragments of the Soviet Salyut-7 space station, the Mir's predecessor, fell on Argentina's Andes Mountains near the Chilean border, inflicting no damage or injuries. Space officials lost control of the Salyut-7 after trying to extend its lifetime.

When Mir was launched on Feb. 20, 1986, it was the epitome of the Soviet technological edge, and it has far surpassed the three to five years it was expected to last. But critics said it had also outlived its usefulness and long pointed to the potential dangers of keeping the aging station aloft.

The Russian Cabinet approved a plan to crash the Mir into the Pacific 900 to 1,200 miles east of Australia on Feb. 27-28. The decision followed failed attempts to find private investors to keep the station operative.

Officials have said Russia should concentrate its funds on the new international space station instead of the Mir â€” something the U.S. space agency NASA has been urging for years. NASA is leading the 16-nation international project, which has suffered repeated delays because of funding problems for Russian modules.

Mission Control on Tuesday was also monitoring the docking of an unmanned Progress cargo ship with the International Space Station. The docking took place shortly after 6 a.m. EST and was a success.