Documents - Mir Mission Interviews

Mir-25 Mission Interviews

Following are links to interviews that took place during Mir-25

John Uri, Phase 1 Mission Scientist - 2/6/98
Andy Thomas, NASA-7 Mir Resident - 2/13/98
David Wolf, NASA-6 Mir Resident - 2/19/98
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 2/27/98
Neal Pellis, NASA Senior Scientist - 3/13/98
Alexander Alexandrov, Cosmonaut - 3/27/98
Alexander Alexandrov, Cosmonaut - 4/3/98
Jerry Miller, Spacewalk Operations Officer - 4/10/98
Andy Thomas, NASA-7 Mir Resident - 4/10/98
Andy Thomas, NASA-7 Mir Resident - 4/30/98
Frank Culbertson, Phase 1 Program Manager - 5/22/98

Mir-25 - Week of February 6, 1998

John Uri Reports on Mir Science

John Uri, the Shuttle-Mir Program Mission Scientist, answers more questions on the human biology and other science of the Shuttle-Mir program.

Question: David Wolf's been home about five days. How's he feeling now?

Uri: I spoke with Dave earlier to day and he's in very good spirits. His recovery is going very well. He's taking his rehabilitation program very seriously. I think it's very important for him to do that, and I think, psychologically, coming off a very successful mission really helped with his rehab program. He has spoken with some of the investigators and has already heard some of the results and I think that really helps with the process of reacclimatizing himself back to 1 g.

Question: Learning how the human body responds to long periods in microgravity is one of the on-going studies of the Shuttle-Mir science program. Now that you've seen six Americans return from extended periods in weightlessness, are you able to draw any preliminary conclusions?

Uri: As Dave implied, being in space for a long time is a very difficult challenge, and with most physiological challenges there's a lot of individual variability. We know that all our crew members came back in good shape and their rehabilitation program was very successful. We'll obviously need to look at a lot more long-duration crew members before we can make some very definitive conclusions. The countermeasures programs we have so far seem to work very well especially for the muscle and cardiovascular changes. Probably need a little more work in the area of bone demineralization, and we hope what we've learned from Mir so far will help us develop those countermeasures on ISS.

Question: Wolf said during interviews on-orbit last week that he felt he had completed more than 100% of his science agenda; while it may be too soon to characterize specific results, what's your grade on the conduct of Wolf's science program, and are there any areas where you anticipate results which might be quickly turned around for applications on the International Space Station?

Uri: Operationally, Dave's flight was very successful. We completed the experiments that we had set out to do. Of course the investigators are now just getting around to looking at the data so we'll know in a few weeks or a few months what the data actually look like. Many of the experiments Dave was doing were continuations from previous missions to add to our overall sizable database already. Of course, Andy's continuing some of those. So we'll know in the not too distant future how successful the experiments really were in terms of giving us the good data that we all expect.

Question: Andy Thomas is now two weeks into his tour of duty on the Mir. Give us a preview of the kind of work he's to do on orbit, including any investigations which are new to his increment.

Uri: Most of the experiments that Andy's doing are continuations from previous ones to add to our database, particularly in the biomedical investigations. We like to have as many subjects as we can, and he's continuing some of those. There are some new experiments on Andy's flight. One in particular in the continuing series of experiments in biotechnology looking at tissue cultures. We're looking at how cancer cells and blood vessel cells interact in zero g. It's very important for future research. And that in particular, that type of science, will be continued on the International Space Station. So the things we have learned from John's flight and Dave's flight, and Andy's flight where we did those experiments will directly go into redesigning the hardware, perhaps redesigning the actual experiment we plan to do in that facility.

Question: The French researcher Leopold Eyharts is conducting a science mission during the three-week handover between Russian crews. Does Eyharts' work, or even the mere presence of six people onboard the Mir, have an impact on Thomas' science?

Uri: As you can imagine, having six people on Mir it's probably very crowded and maybe they bump into each other occasionally, but we have a good working relationship with the French Space Agency, we've worked with them for several years now. Working with them and the Russian timeliners we were able to juggle our science and their science so that we don't interfere with each other, so I'm not expecting any problems with having that many people onboard.

Read John Uri's Oral History

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

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Mir-25 - Week of February 13, 1998

Andy Thomas Talks About Life on Mir

Toward the conclusion of his first two weeks in space, astronaut Andy Thomas talked to news media about life on Mir.

Question: You've been up on Mir for approximately two weeks now. Can you tell us how it's been going and what the adjustment for you has been like, both personally and professionally?

Thomas: It's been going well. It has been a big adjustment though. As you can imagine, learning to live and function on a day-to-day basis permanently in zero gravity is [a big adjustment]. And moving in here is a bit like, if you can imagine, moving into a new house, and you imagine you have boxes of things all over the floor and you have to step around them. Well, up here, the problem's a little different, and that difference is the problem of zero gravity. The boxes - or in our case bags -- are not just on the floor, they're on the walls, on the ceiling and floating everywhere, so it was a packing nightmare for a little while to get everything stowed and to figure out what I needed to function on a day-to-day basis. But once I'd done that, things settled down quite well and now I'm getting into a nice routine of life.
Question: There has been some controversy about you that I'd like to get out of the way. The Mir commander, Talgat Musabayev, complained that, in his opinion, you don't speak Russian very well. There were also reports that Russian command was portraying you as a malcontent because you complained that your space suit didn't fit. Give us your reaction to these stories.
Thomas: On the issue of the suit, the suit is an important piece of emergency equipment which has varying sizing adjustments in it and it was brought up in the shuttle with me, and I worked with the commander of the mission to test it the first time, we found that it was not in correct adjustment, so with his agreement, and agreement from the ground, we made some adjustments to the length of the legs so that I could don and doff the suit properly, and we did that successfully and the suit was fine after that. So once that was done we had no problem. It was just a problem of some straps on the side that were no set up to suit me properly. One of the problems you have when you come to space is that you grow in height, your spine extends a little bit in the absence of gravity and I think that's what was the problem with sizing this particular suit.
I've been talking with Talgat a lot and we've been working together in the Priroda module. We're having a good time together. We joke and kid around. I'm sort of cuing him on English and he's cuing me on Russian and we're telling a lot of war stories together and talking a lot about music and things, and having a good time.
Question: How important is it to be able to communicate socially as well as technically? Do you find that the social aspects in space are just as important as the scientific aspects?
Thomas: Absolutely. Without a doubt, because we spend a lot of time together in a confined space, not just working as professionals, but around the dinner table and this environment here and talking about things and sharing experiences of the day, and looking out the window and observing things together, so you obviously want to be able to have a discourse together and talk freely about things, and we're doing that. We're getting there.
Question: Can you give us a sense of your experiments and what you're trying to accomplish during your time on Mir.

We've activated a number of the experiments. The one that's taking most of my time and certainly the one I find most captivating from an interest point of view is the growth of cellular tissue in a bioreactor vessel and this is an attempt to grow human cancer cells in an artificial environment. The idea that you can synthesize an artificial tumor which you could use for biomedical studies. It's going to take a long time to do this of course, because the growth process is very slow, but so far indications are that it's going quite well and we're quite pleased. We have some other experiments we've been undertaking some studies in here to document the environment within Mir because we want to ensure that we maintain a good environment from the point of view of contaminants. We're documenting the background radiation environment in Mir. We'll be activating an experiment to do some plant growth studies and shortly we'll begin studies looking at the behavior of the human body in this rather unusual zero-gravity environment.

Question: I'm reading your bio, and it says you enjoy horseback riding and jumping, mountain biking, running, wind surfing, playing classical guitar, so unless there's more room up there than I know about you must be doing something else for relaxation. Can you tell us what you're doing?
Thomas: Those are activities I've done at various times in the past. I have to confess that I don't do them all at the same time. There is somewhere here, although I've yet to find it, a guitar, and one of the things Talgat and I want to do is play some music together, because he's actually a very good guitarist and shares a common taste in music that I do, and so we're hoping that we will actually be able to play guitar and I've brought some sheet music to do that. Some of the other activities, basically I've been passing recreational time by looking out the window and taking photographs of the planet, which is a lot of fun, or late at night, just before bed, I do like most people do, I pick up a book and I read, and I've just been reading some books to help get to sleep.
Question: How is it as a place to live and work?
Thomas: So far it's proving to be a very interesting place to live and work. Living in zero gravity is a really unusual sensation. If you want to have fun, zero gravity is a great place to do it. But I would have to admit that if you want to do a very careful, detailed work, zero gravity is tough because you'd be amazed how easily you lose things. You take something and you just let it go for a minute, and you turn your back and you come back and it's gone somewhere, and you won't find it again. And I've had a terrible time just losing things, putting things down and forgetting about them, and they come loose and go flying off somewhere, tools and personal equipment. So that's a big adjustment you have to make, to remember to always put something down and tether it so that you can get back to it, no matter what it is. Your toothbrush even. Your comb. So those are big adjustments in the lifestyle that you have to make when you're in this kind of environment.
Question: You said before the mission "This is going to be hard." Has it turned out to be as hard as you anticipated?
Thomas: Yes. It is hard. It's hard because you're isolated. I mean, I have a very stimulating work day every day. A lot of challenging activities, and of course the view is always there and it's an amazing view. But each day tends to roll into the next and there comes a certain monotony and you have to use your own resources to make the life interesting, to keep your motivation going. And it's undeniably a challenge because you're in a confined space. It's crowded, and you have some difficult objectives, so there are great challenges of taking on a mission like this. There's no doubt about it.
Question: Six people are on Mir. What extra measures are you and the other crew members taking to make allowance for the extra mouths to feed and bodies to keep alive.
Thomas: The resources of Mir can support the additional crew persons here with oxygen and we have an abundance of food. I have to tell you, I'm eating very well up here, perhaps a little too well. There's plenty of food, so we're very comfortable. We're very confined in our work areas because there's not a lot of additional space. We've got experiments set up adjacent to one another throughout Priroda, for example, and you have to work around a colleague while you're trying to get from one experiment to the next. But we understand that and we do that together because we just understand that that's par for the course right now.
Question: Anything surprising to you about physical changes, intellectual changes, emotional changes. Your longest mission before was 10 or 11 days, and now you've been up there a lot longer than that. Anything surprising you about how you're changing.
Thomas: I don't notice personal changes. The biggest surprise is that I've come to expect and adapt very quickly to the idea that things are weightless. You get used to the idea that you can have things like this in front of you and that's normal, that's the norm. And if you think about it, that's really a bizarre concept. After 40 something years of living on the planet, that I've not been able to do this, now I can do this, and yet I've adapted in really the space of few days to accepting that to be a perfectly natural thing, which was a very unexpected occurrence.
Question: What do you eat and how does it taste?
Thomas: We have plenty of food. We have essentially a mixture of two meals a day of American food, two meals a day of Russian food, and it's a variety of foods of freeze-dried variety like you might use if you went on a camping trip, as well as prepackaged food, as well as regular canned food. It's got a good cross section of tastes from chicken, fish, red meat, a whole variety of vegetables and soups, and of course snacks like cookies and crackers, peanuts and cashews, and things like that. So it's really a very full diet. A good selection of juices and tea and coffee. I have more than enough to eat. Probably too much actually.
Question: What's your impression of the support you're getting from the ground and what could the Russian controllers or your NASA people in Russia do to make this an easier four and a half months?
Thomas: They've been pillars of strength. The flight surgeon is taking care of my e-mail and forwarding my e-mail to me so I get personal communications. The people in the Mission Operations Support area are providing me regular dialogue of what needs to be done each day and what the expectations are of the experiments, and any problems I have, they're all happy to step forward and help out with them. The NASA organizations have provided me a lot of psychological support. They've provided a nice selection of video greetings from friends and family, which I replayed the other day and to my very great surprise and enjoyment there was one there from Alan Alda, no less, who happened to be at Johnson Space Center one day and they asked him to do this and he did a wonderful piece wishing me well on Mir.
Question: Are you getting along with all you crewmates?
Thomas: Yes, very well. We're working well together, and I think it's going very well. I think the interpersonal relationships are sound. Of course, we all know each other, we've all spent time together last year off and on at various stages of our training together in Star City, so it's not like we're new to each other. We know each other quite well and the interpersonal relationships are good I think.
Question: There was an incident this week where the Mir went out of control for a minute or two when somebody put the wrong program into an onboard computer, we heard. The Russians say it was no big deal. Was it? And how often do things like this happen?
Thomas: That's the only such incident that's happened in the time I've been here. And from my perspective, I never even noticed it. I didn't see any sign of it. In fact, if someone hadn't told me about it, I wouldn't even have know. It was quite benign.
Question: How would you describe living on Mir compared to what you were led to believe it was going to be like?
Thomas: The biggest issue is that we're really short of storage space and we're always fighting this problem of storage, of where to put things in order to do work, and that, I see as being the big surprise from my point of view.

Read Andy Thomas' Oral History

Read more about Life on Mir with John Blaha

Read more about Andy Thomas and NASA-7

Mir-25 - Week of February 20, 1998

Dave Wolf Talks About Being Back on Earth

On February 19, 1998, David Wolf conducted his first press conference since returning to Earth after 128 days in space.

Wolf: The mission's by far not over. We're continuing medical research data acquisition and rehabilitation is a fairly extensive job. It's serious business coming back from that long of a space flight and then reacclimating to gravity. A little over two weeks have gone by and I'm feeling much better. Particularly in the last few days, strength is coming back. We met our mission objectives and in many cases exceeded them in the areas of technical operations of the space station, repairs of the space station, and the scientific research of the space station, and part of what we are learning is how to join those three areas simultaneously -- station ops, research, and basic living -- and do these in effective manner. Now on the ground we are busy transferring this information in a timely manner into the International Space Station program so that we can take the many lessons that all seven of us have learned and feed them in. It's not just us that have learned, of course, it's a big team involved in this and the debriefing is important to all of us to understand the perspective we saw from space, how that works with the perspective the ground control team saw, the engineering and analysis team. So the teams should be very proud to have done this mission in such an effective manner. It was a pleasure to work with all of you from all the space centers of course, with some reluctance and pleasure I hand the baton over to Andy, the inflight baton and move into the groundbased phase of transferring the information in a useful manner.
Question: Dave I know there's a lot training that goes on to prepare for what you might experience after a long stay. What is something that you experienced that you were not prepared for?
Wolf: The preparation was good and to me there were not major shocks. No training can prepare you fully for the experience of actual spaceflight, particularly long duration. All the little details of how to move effectively, how to handle your equipment and gear in zero gravity, this is something you get better with every day and in fact the last day I got better. Every day, it was better than the day before. So there were no big surprises, but hundreds of little efficiencies to be learned.
Question: If you could have had a pet or mascot on Mir what would it be and why?
Wolf: I think I would have brought an aquarium. It would have been fun to have watched the fish swim upside down and all around. I think they would do that.
Question: Could you describe one of your science experiments for kids in terms of the hypothesis, the procedure, and what were some of the preliminary results that you had.
Wolf: Sure, It's important that you can grow human tissue outside the body for medical research. A hypothesis might be that in zero gravity it would be possible to grow three- dimensional tissue because gravity would be expected to pull the tissue down to a flat surface. And this is important for recreating human tissue. So we would test that hypothesis by putting the cells in space and watching how they grow and if it didn't meet our expectation, we would have to understand why our hypothesis is wrong. Any good hypothesis gives you important information whether it's proved or disproved. And we would move forward with that from an understanding of our hypothesis. And our preliminary results do in fact support that hypothesis. We saw and I have excellent photography of beautiful three-dimensional tissues forming which points the way for the next step.
Question: Based on your experiences, do you believe it's realistic that astronauts in the future will have more than one long-duration mission in their career? Is that a realistic expectation do you think?
Wolf: Anatoly was on his fifth six-month mission and in fact it is more necessary. This is an era of professional astronauts who get better and better with each mission, and this is the time in fact to do repeat missions.
Question: I wonder if you have some thoughts on where some weak spots may be in the preparations. You're up there for three or four months but it takes a year or longer just to get to the starting line. What kinds of things are you saying to the people who are running the program in terms of making this adjustment a little bit easier?
Wolf: There's no easy way to learn Russian up front. That just takes hard work and time. There are some concrete recommendations that we're making. One that is levied against our own program by astronauts frequently, a little too much on the theory of equipment operations and a little too little time on actually running check lists and pushing the buttons. Up in space you're a technician pushing buttons more than a designer involved in the theory of instrumentation and equipment. So some weighting in that direction I think would have been useful.
Question: Dave, on a personal note what were some of the things that you missed the most? When you got back on Earth after spending so many months up there, what did you do?
Wolf: Interestingly enough, I picked up some coffee on the way into work today and it was fun just driving a car into the convenience store and going in and getting a coffee. All the little things that you don't even notice in life become very big things and important and enjoyable when you come back from away from Earth, and that's something I'd like to hold on to for the rest of my life, is enjoying all the details of life.
Question: About your readaptation, can you talk a little about how it's gone and how if at all it may have differed from that of your six predecessors?
Wolf: I think that my readaption fits squarely in the middle of my predecessors, the other five that have returned. And it's hard, it's serious business coming back from a long-duration space flight. The first three days were very serious balance problems, then it got into muscle fatigue and essentially just carrying my own body weight or rolling over in bed was enough to strain muscles. My whole body was sore from head to toe. Now that has gone away for the most part and I am working on conventional physical rehabilitation, very hard for a person that's very weak. And we're monitoring the bone density how it comes back and how fast, as well as muscle strength and coordination and I'm not back yet, and I think it's going to be a fairly long process.
Question: And were you unusually nauseated at all, and were there any special procedures taken for you in the first few days after you came back that might not have been taken for the five others?
Wolf: Not that I know of. When I moved my head speaking in the first night I would get nauseated and had trouble eating that night, very much, and the next day I ate the pizza and felt pretty good about it. That went away over a few days, and to be honest I haven't crossed that story with the other astronauts that have returned to know if it's atypical or not.
Question: Can you remember a time during your stay on the station when cultural or language difference led to a disagreement or difference of opinion and how the crew overcame that?
Wolf: There's no question we had times of very close friendship and warmth and times where we disagreed over issues. I think that is expected when anybody is in close quarters for that long of a time. There's not unresolved issues and nothing stands out in my mind. Sometimes our philosophy was a little difficult to discuss because of language limitations, but we were able to work together quite effectively.
Question: Since you are one of the few astronauts who have conducted a spacewalk with our Russian colleagues, what did that experience tell you about the challenge that NASA and Russia are facing in the future in building the International Space Station? And in your opinion are we up to that task?
Wolf: We're clearly up to the task. I didn't even notice it was Russian space suit and a Russian vehicle we were going out of or that we were even speaking Russian. It was third-level concern to me. Getting the job done was what was on my mind and was what was on Anatoly's mind and we had no problem working together even though we had never done a water run together on the ground preflight. We still worked somewhat seamlessly I think in the EVA. It was very comfortable. This was due to our predecessors and our close work together over the last 2 1/2 years or so, and it would have been hard to imagine doing that cold on ISS having not had the experience we have now.
Question: You've talked about wanting to keep doing this. After a couple of weeks of recovery, do you still want stay in the Astronaut Corps?
Wolf: Yes. I am a career man, and I plan to stay in the Astronaut Corps and fly as long as NASA will let me, and other long-duration flights would be fine with me as well as any other mission.
Question: Some of your predecessors talk about sometimes when they sleep they dream of being on Mir, that they are back on Mir. Do you have any of these sort of dreams or do you ever forget where you are, and is it comfortable, or are you unhappy when you realize you're back on Earth, or are you happier when it happens?
Wolf: There's a little of both there. I certainly do have dreams that I am still up on Mir and they are fascinating dreams and I in fact enjoy the little visit back to the space ship and I am a little disappointed when I come back and can't lift the refrigerator with my baby finger. Then I realize how great the Earth is also. It's lucky to be able to experience both.
Question: Can you give us a couple other favorite or pet examples that you can think of where your experience on Mir will help make ISS operations better?
Wolf: Yes. How to put straps and bungies on the wall and what height, what lengths. Particular designs to make the use of the surface area more effective, how to make translation aids, where to put hand holds and what type. There's literally hundreds of lessons. How to build a trash can so the trash stays in it, more doesn't come out with your hand as you pull your hand out than you put in. How to store food, and package foods so that we have the right kinds of meals at the right times available for everybody. Everything from that to the toilet. It's just a completely different way of life in every detail needs to be looked at and every detail that's done better translates into more efficiencies on orbit for the scientific world and the technical operations world. You can't separate habitability issues from the workload and efficiencies of work issues; it's all one in the same when you are up there.
Question: There was high drama, before you left over the potential risks to your life, instead you ended up with what was a fascinating series of e-mail descriptions of really work-a-day life in space. What factors account for this sudden absence of problems and what do you say to critics who continue to argue that these continuing U.S. sojourns aboard Mir are unnecessarily risky and don't add anything to your learning for the space station.
Wolf: We saw a system of checks and balances work very well to understand the safety issues. We're in the flying business and you can always find a reason not to fly. We flew. We made the right decision, that's absolutely clear at this point. It will never be risk free to fly in space, as any valuable endeavor. So we're up there working hard and that's what my mission reflected, the three of us worked very hard and we had good luck and systems behaved well and we took that station a notch up in maintenance level. I had no idea the level of construction that could be done from inside the spacecraft. An example is the Vosdukh system, that's the carbon dioxide removal system. You just can't believe how much of that internal spacecraft was taken apart to install and construct this system. The level of construction that could occur, would have been hard to imagine had I not seen that and participated in it, so that among hundreds of other lessons, there's just no question we got the value out of this program and continue to.
Question: I'm still struck by the comments of isolation that the participants from the U.S. feel and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how much of an obstacle you think that is. Is it an obstacle for everyone or does it depend on the individual's personality? Is it something you encounter early and overcome, over time, or is it something that sort of builds and there's sort of a crescendo at the end as you look forward to coming back and wrapping up all of this? Do you see any way to deal with that or is it just something you have to learn to expect?
Wolf: You sure do miss Earth, and all the detail of it. At the same time you need to get a mindset where you move to space and you are moving to a new environment and sometime later you'll move back to Earth. Allowing your mind to separate and be living in space for an in-depth period helps you adapt. I think when I overcame that a month or so into the mission, things were much easier. I did not feel highly isolated. I felt I lived in a new place and had a new world and it was easy. Everybody's going to react differently and use different methods to adapt.
Question: You said you had to make the adjustments, that you were in a new place. What did you feel most comfortable doing in that new place and what did you feel least comfortable doing?
Wolf: I felt very comfortable doing research up there, setting up a work station, wiring up the gear, making observations and thinking about measurements. It felt comfortable to be in a laboratory working. As for as being least comfortable, I wasn't uncomfortable really with any aspect of the mission. Really felt comfortable about all of it.
Read David Wolf's Oral History

Read more about David Wolf and NASA-6

Mir-25 - Week of February 27, 1998

Frank Culbertson Discusses Activities on Mir

Astronaut Frank Culbertson, NASA's Shuttle-Mir Program Manager, talks about the progress of the final increment of the Shuttle-Mir program.

Andy Thomas is in the 34th day of his tour of duty onboard the Mir. Read us your report card on the first month of this seventh American mission to Mir.
Culbertson: Andy's definitely working hard and it definitely is a challenge for him but he's an A+ student all the way. He's handling it really well. I believe he had a good understanding of what it was going to be like before he started, and he's confirmed much of that. He certainly is turning to and providing a lot of good information to us on the ground through his e-mails and the video.
We see that he seems to be getting along very well with his new crewmates. He started this mission with Mir-24 cosmonauts Solovyev and Vinogradov. They've come home and been hailed for the work that they have done repairing the station. What sort of shape is the Mir in now?
Culbertson: The Mir is definitely in good shape. They worked very hard to repair the systems and use the hardware that was sent up to them to do that repair, and as Dave Wolf said, they are master craftsmen at doing that. They did have an anomaly yesterday on the Mir that got everybody's attention for a while. It looks like we're going to have to replace a valve that got overheated. In the trace contaminant system, they have a canister that heats up to over 200 degrees centigrade and apparently a switch was out of configuration and allowed the fan to come on, which blew hot air through this canister through a valve whose seals were not designed to take that high a temperature. So they ended up producing a little bit of smoke and smell and elevated the carbon monoxide a little bit, but that's been coming down steadily, with the alternative system they have. They always have a backup to everything, and the crew's still in good shape and we believe we'll fix that eventually once they get the spare parts onboard.
Up until a week ago Thomas was sharing laboratory space in the Priroda module with the French researcher Leopold Eyharts. Did the presence of another crew onboard the Mir affect the start-up of Thomas' science program?
Culbertson: It certainly was a factor that we considered in trying to evaluate what workload we should put on him and what pace he should begin at. I think everybody was very patient with each other and they worked very well together. He should be able to pick up the pace a little bit more now and get a more of the resources specifically targeted for his experiments, and I think that he'll see a higher workload. But it also was good in that it allowed him to get acclimated to where he was without having to worry too much about the science. Apparently he and Leopold worked together very well in the Priroda.
Thomas' Russian crewmates have begun preparations for a planned series of spacewalks to the exterior of the Spektr module, with the first now targeted for this coming Monday evening CST. Describe the tasks the cosmonauts have planned on this excursion, and discuss what Thomas' job will be inside the station while Musabayev and Budarin work outside.
Culbertson: This first EVA for the Mir-25 crew will be around the Spektr module and around the damaged area that occurred with the collision with the Progress. They're going to install some handrails that are already out there that Solovyev took out on a previous EVA so that it'll be easier to work around that area. Then they're going to install some foot restraints at the base of the solar array that will allow them to work up the sides of the solar array without having to hang on to it. And then they will install a bracket or a brace on the side of the solar array that will stiffen it in case there is any further weakening in the structure and prevent it from flopping around so that in the future they can not only conduct operations safely with docking, etc., but also if they want to do further activities with that solar array, it's stiffer and stronger.
Previously you've said you thought it unlikely that Spektr will ever be completely recovered and put back into service, but that the effort to find and seal the leak in the module's hull would be worthwhile. As the U.S., Russia and their other partners look to begin assembly of a new space station later this year, what's to be gained from trying to repair a facility which probably has only a short time remaining on orbit?
Culbertson: I don't know that we'll be able to get very far in repairing it, but certainly I still think that detecting the leak and working on leak detection techniques and hardware will be beneficial for the future because it's not guaranteed if you have a leak you're going to know exactly where it is, and we certainly would like to be able to plug it. So we've still got people looking at options for indicator gases or other means. The Russians are putting what they call some "tell tails" or tufts around the base of the solar array on those handrails that may give us some indication if we flow air through that module of where the leak might be. It's very difficult to isolate, though.
Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History

Mir-25 - Week of March 13, 1998

Neal Pellis Discusses Thomas's Research Program

Neal Pellis, Senior Scientist in Biotechnology and Cell Science at Johnson Space Center, talks about the research program that Andy Thomas is performing while on Mir.

Throughout his time on the Mir Andy Thomas has been working to eliminate large air bubbles inside the COCULT reactor vessel. Why are those bubbles a problem, and what action has been taken to shrink or remove them from the apparatus?

Pellis: "The bubbles are a problem mainly because they offer an additional mechanical shear or stress on the cells that are growing inside the reactor and they can actually knock apart assemblies that have already taken place under the unique conditions of microgravity. That's one thing. The second thing about it is that it does interrupt some of the flow streaming that's necessary to feed the cells. So we have two concerns and the first one is the most critical concern, largely related to the size of the bubbles. The bubble's are not new to us because we had this similar experience when John Blaha was up there with a previous experiment that was with cartilidge. These bubbles can occupy a substantial volume of the reactor and as they pass around the tissue they can knock the small assemblies apart. There are several strategies that you can undertake in order to shrink or eliminate the bubbles. The first is a mechanical approach. We changed the roptational configuration of this reactor in such a fashion that it almost acts like a centrifuge instead of a bioreactor so those things of greater mass will move to the outside and the gaseous bubbles that are less will move to the inside proximal to that inner cylinder, which is actually a filter and the attempt would be then to increase the flow rate and force those out. The mechanical approach has been worked with a number of different engineers and scientists from within NASA and from outside NASA and as yet that strategy has not given us the result that we want. So the mechanical approach, and there are several ways in which we have tried to do this, is not giving us the kind of result we got in increment 3 with John Blaha. The alternate approach right now is to metabolically eliminate them and the way that we do that is that we slow the rate at which we feed the cells and in feeding the cells, we're feeding them oxygen at the same time. The bubbles are made up of oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide primarily. What you can do is force the cells to eat the oxygen out of the bubble and the bubble decreases. As it decreases its amount of oxygen, it's nitrogen concentration goes up and by what's called 'partial pressure difference' they will actually dissolve. They'll actually redissolve back into the culture medium and slowly you can erode the bubble away. The extent to which we can be successful doing this is the unknown. We know already that we have reduced the size of them."

Earlier versions of this experiment flew on previous mission increments, beginning with John Blaha's tour of duty; what has been learned from the work done on orbit so far?
Pellis: "It's a scientific bonanza for us even though it was a single experiment that was conducted over approximately 140 days. That was a cartilidge experiment with John Blaha, and obviously the things that we have learned is that we can in fact assemble and propagate cells to make immature cartilidge, which is much to our advantage, because it's most biocompatible when it's immature. It was a very successful experiment from that standpoint. It's was a very successful experiment from the cell biology standpoint in that we learned that cells conduct themselves very differently in microgravity in that their assembly and array and the way they put themselves togetyher is is much different than it is on Earth. That's a very telling incident, albeit a very narrow window to look through right now, but it's a very telling incident when we conceptualizing things like wound healing or repair of bone or repair of solid tissue, repair of cartilidge. When you start thinking in the context of embryogenesis, how would things develop embryologically? Would cells arrange the same way they do on the ground? We don't know this. So we got a little peek in microgravity. Terrestrial biology behaves substantially different. So it's a very exciting time for the scientists.
"The subsequent mission that we've done that was operated by Dave Wolf was a series of experiments in which we tried to learn whether we can conduct a cell repository on orbit. in a laboratory we grow cells every day and we take a small sample out and put them into new culture media and grow them up again. That's a critically important measure in operating a cell biology, a cell and tissue culture-type laboratory on orbit. And we needed to know if we could do that. And in addition, we needed to know if space invokes any untoward effects on these cell populations as they replicate. Do we have the same kind of cell that we started with? Is there something different, and is that difference invoked by microgravity, the radiation environment, what? Once again, those findings are in the accumulation stage. We just received those samples and so I can't make distinct comments about it, but we're very excited about what the prospects are in that."
Describe how flying this experiment on the Russian space station has helped the technology grow, and talk about how it's planned to be used on the international space station.
Pellis: We look forward to a continuously operating facility on International Space Station wherein we would be able to conduct numerous different types of experiments that lead to new approaches in tissue engineering disease modeling. The Mir experience has given us a lot of cues on how we will do this. For this it has been school. We're hoping that with the culmination of Andy's work that we will graduate and instead of using space station to learn how to do the experiments, we'll use space station to actually conduct the experiment. We're very grateful for the fact that we have the Mir experience to be able to do that -- both scientifically and from the standpoint of development of the instrumentation."
Read Phase 1 Scientist John Uri's Oral History

Read more about Shuttle-Mir Science

Mir-25 - Week March 27, 1998

Interview with Cosmonaut Alexander Alexandrov

While on-orbit work has been going on, a number of Russian spacewalking experts have been at the Johnson Space Center for meetings of the International Space Station's joint spacewalk working group. The leader of the Russian delegation is cosmonaut Alexander Alexandrov, the chief of the flying and test service of RSC energia; Alexandrov conducted two spacewalks from the Salyut-7 space station in 1983, and spent 160 days aboard the Mir Space Station in 1987.

Earlier this week he was asked to describe the work planned for the Mir-25 cosmonauts during next Wednesday's spacewalk.

"Musavayev and Budarin will exit from the airlock and then with the help of a cargo boom that is on the Base Block, will translate to the area on Spektr where the incapacitated solar array is located and will prepare a workplace around the array. They will place anchors in the workplace and they will bring with them all of the materials they need to perform the repair. The central beam requires a splint, as it were, as you would for a broken leg. It's about a meter and a half long. It has clamps on the ends for attachment to the beam, and once they attach this to the beam, and I'm sure they'll be able to do this, to then reinforce the array beam so that it becomes rigid. That's the repair itself. We did not want to remove the array because although it's damaged it does provide electrical power and it would be a shame to throw it away, so we decided to repair it.

First, as I've mentioned, we have to reinforce the array. Next we will do the necessary EVAs required by the flight program and then only after that we can undertake new work related to repair of Spektr. In any case, we wish to perform examinations of the Spektr in the area of the radiators and the array drive and to find any leaks in that area and then possibly it would be possible to create plasters, as it were, to seal the leaks, and if this is not a crack or anything like that we could use special materials - mastics and adhesives - that would seal the leaks, but this is in the future. At present we are working out various methodologies to perform such a repair because you want to assure hardening in vacuum, you want to understand very swell that any possible leakage has been eliminated from the Spektr module, and our specialists are engaged in examining these issues. We have a need to change the jets on the boom that allow us to take care of roll maneuvers of the station. This number 1 unit, which is on the station now, has exhausted its propellant and it must be replaced, and that will require three or four EVAs."
Read Alexander Alexandrov's Oral History

Mir-25 - Week of April 3, 1998

Interview with Cosmonaut Alexander Alexandrov

While on-orbit work has been going on, a number of Russian spacewalking experts have been at the Johnson Space Center for meetings of the International Space Station's joint spacewalk working group. The leader of the Russian delegation is cosmonaut Alexander Alexandrov, the chief of the flying and test service of RSC energia; Alexandrov conducted two spacewalks from the Salyut-7 space station in 1983, and spent 160 days aboard the Mir Space Station in 1987.

Earlier this week he was asked to describe the continuing work planned for the Mir-25 cosmonauts as they attempt to replace the Sofura boom's jet thruster package.

"The work consists of the following: The cosmonauts egress from the lock and translate with the help of the boom. One of them will be on the base, the other will be at the end of the boom, and the one at the base will translate the boom to the Sofora. The crew will disconnect the cable connections of the Sofora, go to the top, unlatch the Sofora jets, and then with a uniform force free it from the boom and move it from the boom and allow it to drift away. That's one EVA. After that they return inside the station.

There are three small auxiliary booms, which, so that they not interfere with the operation of the Sofora, will also be removed and placed nearby, near the base of the Sofora.
When the crew egresses the third time they will allow the Sofora to hinge back and will connect the end of the Sofora with the reciprocal portion of the jet assembly in the Progress cargo vehicle. Then, with the help of drives - which are rather powerful and there is a manual backup in case they fail - the crew will redeploy the Sofora into its fully extended position, will reconnect all the necessary connections, and the new jet assembly will be ready to work.
If there is a fourth EVA, then the crew will reconstruct the configuration of booms that were there before back onto the Kvant and then they will return inside the station. That summarizes the program."
Read Alexander Alexandrov's Oral History

Mir-25 - Week of April 10, 1998

Interview with Jerry Miller

This week Musabayev and Budarin conducted their second spacewalk to the area of the Spektr module; describe the work they were able to complete there this past Monday.

Miller: As a matter of fact, it was the completion of an EVA which was started earlier. In order to work on the broken solar array they had to first install a set of handrails to create a work site. The Spektr module was not originally designed to have EVAs performed on it, and so around the base of the solar array, a work site had to be created. Once the handrails were installed, they placed two foot restraints on either side of the array, and then went up to the structure that had the problem from the earlier Progress collision and installed a brace, which is a bracket - two ends with an adjustment pole in between to stabilize it.
That solar array was weakened last summer when it took the brunt of the impact of the Progress re-supply ship, but it has maintained its position for more than nine months now; why did Russian mission managers feel it necessary to install a brace to it now?
Miller: Interestingly enough, we saw in the original pictures, just after the accident where the two support struts which maintain the position of the array normally, had a fracture on one of them. In subsequent pictures we've seen a little bit of what's called, in engineering terms, "creep." If you have damage to a piece of metal and it continues to fatigue over time, that crack will propagate or creep, and there's some concern that continued motion of the station could cause that to completely fracture, at which point the array would be held just by electrical cables.
Tomorrow morning the Mir-25 cosmonauts are to begin a series of spacewalks to another part of the station, to replace a jet thruster package on the Sofora boom, which rises from the Kvant-1 module. That task is slated to be completed over the course of at least three spacewalks...what is it about the task that makes it so time-consuming?
Miller: Exactly. Any time you're going to introduce additional forces, such as the thrusters off of Priroda, you're concerned that you're going to have a little bit more motion out of that array and with the brace in place, it'll stabilize it and we know where it's restrained rather than just be the flexible electrical cabling.

Mir-25 - Week of April 10, 1998

A Conversation with Andy Thomas

You look like you're having a fine time!

Thomas: Oh yeah. We are. This is a grand way to spend time. It's an amazing environment to be in that you can do this kind of thing at will ["stands" on his head]. Try that at home.
Do you enjoy standing on your head, Andy?
Thomas: I'm not standing on my head, though. This is zero gravity. There's no up or down. I enjoy the freedom that we have in this environment. It's really amazing to just function and just enjoy the freedom of movement that it gives you. It presents difficulties with working and so on, but just to savor it is really something I relish.
Actually, it would be at times hard work having to tether everything that you initially take hold of.
Thomas: Yes. That's true. When you're doing work with tools and instruments it can be very difficult because everything floats away. So the simple act, for example, of undoing a screw, can be quite complicated, because as soon as the screw comes free it will float away, the screwdriver in your hand will float away. So everything has to be tethered down, and it can be difficult to work under those circumstances. You need extra pairs of hands always to grab these things that are floating around. You get accustomed to it after a while, though. There's a learning curve you go through and then you become quite adept at it.
Andy, you're half way through your scheduled stay. How is it going?
Thomas: I think it's going very well. It's a little more than half way through. Yesterday was the 11-week anniversary of my launch on STS-89 in January. I have about seven weeks, a little more maybe, to go before STS-91 will arrive and pick me up. I'm very pleased with the progress. I've settled into what I think is a very stable routine and I think things are going well.
It has lived up to expectations?
Thomas: Oh yes. I think the expectations I had were largely accurate. I'm pleased with the way a number of things have gone. I'm pleased with the way I adapted to the zero-gravity environment because that's not always easy to do for some people. I'm pleased with the experimental program that I have and the work that I'm doing, and I'm pleased, particularly, with the crew that I'm working with and the rapport that we're developing.
Andy, I have to say that in the beginning there were reports of some hiccups. How accurate were they regarding your space suit and your Russian language?
Thomas: The problem with the suit was that when I tried it on up here, it wasn't adjusted correctly for my size because when you get into zero gravity, your spine actually grows a little bit and you become a little bit taller, so clothing has to have an adequate amount of adjustment. Of course it's a bit hard to predict how much adjustment that's going to be. So I tried to put this suit on, which you have to pull over your head, and I wasn't able to do it. And with the concurrence of the Russian commander we agreed that the best thing to do was to readjust the suit, and in concurrence with specialists on the ground in Russia, we made those adjustments and then the suit fit fine. So I was pleased about that. The Russian language, of course, is a big challenge for anyone who undertakes a mission like this because you need to have a reasonably good social vocabulary and, of course, a strong technical vocabulary as well, and that's not an easy thing to do. I think a measure of the communication skills you have is what kind of relationship you're able to establish with the people you fly with, your crew mates, and as I said a moment ago, I'm particularly pleased with the way we've built a relationship, a working relationship and a social relationship.
I thought you were brave in the first place to attempt to speak Russian.
Thomas: So did I. It was a big challenge, but that's part of the reason I did it. It was a very appealing challenge. I was quite enamored with the idea of learning this language, which, from our perspective in the West, is such a "foreign" foreign language if you follow my meaning. And it has been a fascinating experience.
Mir has come under a level of controversy. Is the ship sailing well, if I can put it that way?
Thomas: Yes, I think so. The systems onboard have been functioning very well. We've had minimal problems as a matter of fact. The conditions onboard are very stable, very comfortable. I've certainly had no complaints about it. I think we've got a very stable vehicle and it's running well up here.
No space walk yet. Would you like to?
Thomas: I've been through the training program in Russia to undertake a space walk, and I'm familiar with the suits, but there is not actually a space walk or an EVA manifested for me during this increment, because there's not a piece of U.S. equipment that really requires a U.S. crew person's presence. The space walks all require the cosmonauts because they're very labor intensive on the apparatus of the station and they've been trained for many hours in those activities. Should one ever present itself as, perhaps, one day it might, though I don't think during this flight, I'd like to step up to it, yes.
I know you have two colleagues with you, but there is still a level of isolation. How are you dealing with that?
Thomas: There is isolation, and there's confinement too. It's not claustrophobic by any means. We have a lot or room here and I feel very comfortable here, but there is a certain amount of confinement because you can't just get up and drive somewhere and visit someone or go outside. What you have to do is use methods to provide yourself some detachment from what's around you so that you can psychologically remove yourself from the environment you're in without physically doing it, and the way you do that is with music, books. I read a lot . There's a guitar up here that I've tried to play. I've got CDs. I've got CD ROMs for the computer. I've been writing. I've even tried doing some sketches. So there's a lot of things you can do to provide recreation. Of course, there's always looking out the window too, because we have a pretty spectacular view.
That view out the window must be quite something. What are you seeing?
Thomas: It depends where you look. From my position here I have windows to either side, and apparently for our orientation at this particularly moment we're looking toward deep space with those two windows. There are two windows down in the floor in front of me and I can see light from them, so that suggests that the Earth must be down there. I haven't checked our orientation at this particular moment. But you have a great view. Right now we're passing over the Eurasian continent, probably south of Moscow and approaching the terminator where it'll soon become night, and then we'll head on south down toward Australia. We should be flying over Australia in about 30 minutes. I've had some spectacular passes over Australia, actually. It's gorgeous to see from space. It really a multitextured land.
What do you actually see? Is it color or is it texture?
Thomas: It's both. You see texture, you see color. The mountains you can see as folds in the land and you can see things like mountain ranges as a collection of mountain ranges. For example, when I fly over South Australia I can see the Mount Lofty ranges as distinct from the Flinders range. The Flinders range stand out very much as their own set of ranges. You can see the way they're all folded together, a bit like a rumpled carpet, and they're all connected. And of course you can see color too. You can see agricultural regions from space very clearly. The areas that are farmed stand out as opposed to the natural areas with different shades of green. Of course, it depends on the season. In the northern hemisphere you see, at this time of year, a lot of ice and a lot of snow. It's very white over Canada and Siberia. Perhaps one of the most spectacular views I've had was actually one night when we were flying south of Australia across the Great Australian Barrier. I could see Australia city lights on one side, and then as I looked at the other side, which was due south, I could see the Aurora Australis over the southern polar regions, and it was this shimmering curtain of iridescent green waving across the sky and it was really a dynamic thing, moving and shimmering,. It was just a beautiful sight. Unfortunately I don't have any film that's sensitive enough to capture, but it was quite impressive.
You look absolutely wonderful. You're obviously in good health?
Thomas: Yes. Actually, the lifestyle up here is very good for you. We have extremely good food. The Russian food is excellent. The soups are outstanding and the juices are just marvelous and there's plenty of it, and I also have an abundance of American food at my disposal. We exercise regularly. I'm on a treadmill running 2.5 - 3 K on a treadmill every day, something that I'm not perhaps as disciplined on Earth as I should be. So, yes, it's going well. I feel good. That's one of the amazing things about this environment. You can feel very good in this environment, which, if you think about it, is a very alien environment to us.
You're telling me space suits you.
Thomas: I find it a very agreeable place to be. This is an amazing experience to go through. To be able to live and function in weightlessness and have to do everything in weightlessness - eat, drink, sleep, and work -- for this period of time is an extraordinary undertaking. It really is quite amazing.
Some of the experiments that you're conducting do involve how the body reacts to long-term weightlessness. Have you noticed anything about your body?
Thomas: I've lost some weight, which was probably not a bad thing. I've had a few aches and pains, which I think are a consequence of the fact that there's a certain amount of spinal extension. Other than that, no I haven't. I don't have any vestibular problems, I haven't had any gastrointestinal problems. I feel very normal and feel very healthy and comfortable, so I have no complaints about it at all.
You only have two months to go. Will you be disappointed if you don't take a space walk, or it doesn't matter?
Thomas: No, I wont' be disappointed. I'm having a very good experience up here. There was never a space walk planned or manifested for me. I don't have expectation of it. I'm happy to support my crew mates when they do the space walks as they've been doing over the last few days and will be doing in the coming weeks. This flight is turning out to be a really good experience from my perspective, and I'm very pleased with the outcome of it, because as you observed, there were lots of questions about the flight program before I left, and I'm very pleased with this outcome.
It does occur to me that there is very little privacy. Am I correct in understanding that you are monitored almost 24 hours of the day.
Thomas: No, not 24 hours of the day. When I do exercise I wear a heart monitor and we transmit the data to Earth so that cardio performance can be monitored. We periodically do tests that monitor physical parameters during physical exertion, just to ensure that our health is maintained. That's clearly important. But other than that, no, we're not monitored. We work on a very normal work cycle based, of course, on Moscow time. Get up at about 8:30 in the morning, which is a quite comfortable hour, have some breakfast, start work. We usually work through the day. Around 1:00 or 2:00 I will stop and do my exercise and then clean up. Following that we will have lunch, perhaps at 3:00 or 4:00, a late lunch, and then we'll continue working usually to 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening, follow that with dinner, perhaps then watch a video, watch a movie, read a book, write a diary, write letters home, read e-mail, that kind of thing, and go to bed at about 11:00 or 12:00. It's a very interesting way to spend a day. Each day is good. If you look at each day and what I do, I have a lot of really interesting things happen. My only thing I would say about it is that every day tends to be like every other day so there is an element of monotony to it a little bit. That's the only problem with this kind of life.
We're almost out of time. Do you want me to send you up anything? Vegemite? Anything that you're missimg out on?
Thomas: I've already put in my request for a number of items that I'd like and some of them they're a bit reluctant to send up a spacecraft, but they'll be waiting for me when I get back on the ground. But thank you nonetheless.
Enjoy your stay. We look forward to seeing you again.
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed the conversation.
Read Andy Thomas' Oral History

Read more about Andy Thomas and NASA-7

Mir-25 - Week of May 1, 1998

Interview with Andy Thomas

Andy Thomas was interviewed on April 30, 1998, by Dan Billow
in Orlando and Ed Green in Denver.

Question: Andy, this is Dan Billow at WESH in Orlando. Do you hear me all right?
Thomas: I hear you well, Dan. Welcome to Mir.
Question: Thank you and good morning. At least, it's morning in Florida where I am, and I appreciate you taking some time to talk to me. I'd like to start by asking you about the delay in your return flight, which I'm sure you were informed of a day or two ago. Discovery coming up about five days later. What was your first thought when you heard about that?
Thomas: I wasn't too surprised. I've done a lot of support work at the Cape. I know they're under a very demanding schedule with the processing flow, so it didn't surprise me too much, and it's only five days. You know, on Saturday I'm coming up on my 100th-day anniversary here in space, so after having spent that much time, I'm not going to sweat five days.
Question: I was wondering, too, what you're looking forward to when you get home. Clearly, anyone would look forward to seeing their family and the people that they haven't seen for a while, but what else would you like to do when you get home? Go for a walk? And are you beginning to think of doing that type of thing?
Thomas: Yes I am. I must admit I've started to think more and more in that coming-home mode. I think the thing I would like most is to have a nonscheduled life. With the precious time available as a resource up here, it's very important that we schedule our activities and we fill the time productively. So most of my life up here is scheduled, and, of course, I preceded this flight with a year of training in Russia, which was also scheduled time. Every day was scheduled, every waking moment. So I'm very much looking forward to having no schedules in my life and just being able to be free to do what I want - to take a walk or go to the store or go to visit friends. I think that's going to be the best part about being back.
Question: Easy to understand. I want to ask you, speaking of talking with friends and family, about your e-mail, because I believe there's been a little bit of difficulty there. Would you mind describing in detail any delays that you've had in receiving your e-mail and the reasons for any delays?
Thomas: The e-mail system we use is not what you would conventionally call an e-mail system where you can just send a message to another computer. People do it by sending messages to my flight surgeon who is in Moscow who then formats them and puts them into the Russian communication system for uplink here. We've had a number of problems in the uplink space, both here onboard with the system that receives and transmits unable to do that, but also with the system on the ground that transmits them and receives them. So because of the loss of that link I was unable to receive e-mails. I have been sending some out through an alternative communication link and that has worked out better, but certainly for a while I hadn't been receiving anything, but I believe that there's a large number that have come up for me today, as a matter of fact, so I'm looking forward to catching up on the e-mail.
Question: How long has it been since you've read messages from home?
Thomas: Personal mail, it's only been about 9 or 10 days.
Question: Any problem with prioritization of those messages? In other words, have you not received them because they've been given lower priority than other work or other things by Russian mission control?
Thomas: I think some of the work files were sent up, quite naturally, were given higher priority, and that would be the appropriate thing to do, but I think the problem was basically that we didn't have the communication links open to let any transmissions come up. We weren't even able to receive work files that scheduled our daily activities. That was the basic problem.
Question: How important are those messages to you, and how much do you miss not being able to see them all the time?
Thomas: Actually, I find e-mail to be something I've missed a lot. I really enjoy it. It's great to get messages because you can read them and reread them and then you can respond. I really enjoy receiving e-mail. It's a great support structure. It's a great boost to receive them. I get a kick out of all the e-mail that I get.
Question: Andy, there's a report from the BBC that says last June, when a Progress ship collided with Mir, the batteries on the Soyuz craft were dead at that time and its control panel could not be turned on. Were you ever made aware of that?
Thomas: I have not heard that story. I wasn't following the events at that time very closely, so I don't know what the full details were. But that's because I was not watching them that closely.
Question: Do you believe that anything like that could ever have been the case during your stay? Are batteries always fine on the Soyuz, or might they be out at times?
Thomas: The Soyuz is parked, docked, to us in what's called a conservation mode, whereby it's potentially powered down to the minimum power levels, but is available in the event that we need to do an emergency egress and can be quickly powered up. We have flown in the Soyuz, and the time we flew in it, it functioned perfectly and I have every reason to believe that it would do the same thing if it were required to. I don't have lack of confidence in that system.
Question: With regard to safety measures, I'm sure you have a very great awareness of the things you might need to do in an emergency. For example, would you mind telling me where the closest fire extinguisher and breathing apparatus are to your present position right now?
Thomas: There's some behind me. There's an access port that you can probably see that leads to an adjacent module, Kvant-1, and I don't think it's in the field of view but there is actually a fire extinguisher just down there, and there's also a breathing mask above the hatch. There's also duplicate systems at the other end of this module, which is about 15 feet from me, which I can see, but obviously you can't. And in each of the modules that's mated with Mir, we have similar systems at both ends of the modules. At both ends of the modules there's fire extinguishers and breathing masks. Should I need one, depending on where I am in the module, I could get one from either end of the module virtually immediately.
Question: My last question. It's my understanding that on May 17 you'll get a Progress capsule docking and that capsule will help lower the orbit, the altitude, that Mir is in. In other words, you'll be on hand at sort of the beginning of the end of Mir, and while it won't really affect your mission, how do you feel about being there for that rather historic moment?
Thomas: Well, I don't think I would call it the beginning of the end of Mir. The orbit is periodically lowered for a variety of reasons to match performance boundaries of vehicles that come to it. When the shuttle comes, the orbit is lowered, so it's a fairly standard thing to do. It's not a big deal. I'm very conscious of the fact - and my crewmates are too -- that we're the last international crew of this cooperative program that is going to fly on Mir since I'll be the last representative of the U.S. that's flying on Mir, and I'm very sensitive about that role, and I'm very complimented that I've been able to represent the U.S. program up here.
Question: Hello, Andrew Thomas. This is Ed Green in Denver.
Thomas: Hi Ed. You're going to have to speak up a bit. I'm having a little trouble hearing you.
Question: All right. I've been looking forward to this for a long time because through the miracle of technology, I sit in Denver as you sit on the Mir. So thank you very much for being with us this morning. You are serving as (?????) Engineer II on the Russian Space Station Mir. Can you tell us exactly what you do on Mir, what you're responsible for?
Thomas: I have mixed roles up here. One of my functions is the science program that we brought aboard with us on the shuttle back in February. It's a suite of experiments exploring various facets of the space environment. The effect of space on the human body, on crew persons, the effect of zero gravity on physical systems, as well as some biological experiments. So my workday is largely focused around those. But in addition to those, I have duties onboard the station, particularly with regard to maintenance of water. We use water here not just for drinking, but we use it for generating oxygen and have assignment to water transfers that can be used to maintain those systems. Of course, on this space station, as would be the case in any space station, there's a lot of housekeeping duties that we're all involved in. Maintaining the environment, keeping it clean and habitable, basically.
Question: For the longest time we seemed to hear of nothing but problem after problem on the Mir. How are things running up there now?
Thomas: I think that may have been true a year ago, but I don't think, if you look at the history of the last year, that that is the case. I think Mir has actually been running very stable operations for quite some time now. The Russian crews have done a commendable job in pooling the resources and bringing systems on line and restoring the capabilities of Mir. My own colleagues up here have done no less than 30 hours of EVA in order to brace up the damaged solar array and then to change out an engine that had reached the end of its useful lifetime, an attitude control engine. So I think a lot of work has been done that's made Mir operations very stable right now and I think it is indeed a very stable operation, and as I can testify after nearly 100 days in orbit of stable orbit operations during that period.
Question: That's certainly good to hear, and as you mentioned, you're approaching your 100th day on orbit in Mir. You're scheduled to depart and come back to Earth in early June, but you're also the final of seven astronauts to join the Mir. Is it simply the end of the program, or why the final astronaut?
Thomas: It's the end of the Phase 1 program, which is a collaborative program between the U.S. and Russia as a precedent to the International Space Station, to give us experience in working together and to give the U.S. experience in long-duration space flight capability and operating a space station. It was intended to lead into the International Space Station, which is the next step, and so it's logical that this program should wind down as International Space Station starts to come on line. And that's what's happening and that's why I'm the last U.S. representative of this program. I feel very privileged that I'm one of those seven that has had the opportunity to fly on this vehicle.
Question: Over the course of your time on the space station, has anything really surprised you, caught you off guard? Something you just didn't expect?
Thomas: I've been asked that question a number of times, and I guess I still give the same answer. It surprises me how natural I feel in this zero-gravity environment, being able to float around anywhere you want, at will. It now feels like something I've been doing all my life, and clearly it's not. It's a very unnatural environment to be in and yet I feel very comfortable in it. That has surprised me. You have to work hard to be in it. It's not always easy, because things are always floating around and you're losing things and they're flying away, but I now feel very comfortable in it. I think one of the interesting things when I get back to Earth is going to be how I adapt back to that environment, which I'm really accustomed to, having been away from it for so long.
Question: Being on the Mir for such an extended period of time, what do you miss the most? What are you looking forward to most when you return to Earth, other than, I'm sure, seeing family and friends?
Thomas: I think just having free time. We have to make very productive use of our time up here, of course, because it's very expensive time. Time is a very valuable resource in zero gravity in orbit. So every day of our week is planned out in fairly minute detail. I always have something that I need to be doing. I think I'm looking forward to the point where I won't have anything to do. I won't have a lot of responsibilities, and I won't have a list of tasks for each day. I'll just be able to get up and be free to do whatever I want to do. Go out visit friends and do different things, whatever strikes my will. I'm looking forward to being in that mode more than anything, I think.
Question: Any smells that you missed or foods that you really want to taste again?
Thomas: We have really good food up here, and I've really enjoyed the food that we've got. I haven't become aware of missing any specific food. I know some of my predecessors said they really miss pizza. Pizza would be nice, but I'm not aware that I'm missing anything particular. I think perhaps really cold drink. We don't refrigerate drinks, so a really cold drink on a hot day would be nice. I don't find myself missing foods in particular, specific categories of food at all.
Read Andy Thomas' Oral History

Read more about Andy Thomas and NASA-7

Mir-25 - Week of May 22, 1998

Frank Culbertson Reports on Mir

With the Shuttle-Mir program heading into its final days, astronaut Frank Culbertson, the manager of NASA's phase 1 program office, discussed the latest events on Andy Thomas' flight.

Question: Thomas is now just three weeks away from completing the final tour of duty by an American on the Russian space station. How would you grade the work he and his Russian crewmates have done on orbit over the past four months?

Culbertson: This is definitely a grade A crew. They've worked very hard, they've executed a lot of EVAs. Andy's worked very hard on his science. They've overcome some problems, some challenges, just like every crew, and they've maintained their health and they're ready to continue. Andy is ready to come home and I think will be healthy when he returns, so they're hitting their priorities and I think worked well together as a team.

Question: Since February of last year you've provided updates any number of times on the condition of the Mir Space Station, which continues to fly - well beyond its original design life - in spite of some well-publicized difficulties. What's the condition of the Russian space station as it orbits today?

Culbertson Actually, the Mir is in very good condition. There are still some age effects that they have accounted for and are working on very hard, but the systems themselves are operating. We have the redundancy that we require. We could, by our standards, transfer another crew member to the Mir and continue operating if that were the case and if we were planning to do that, but it certainly meets our criteria for that. The Mir, overall, is in good shape and they've replaced some critical systems like the RCS boom jets recently, so they're operating just fine.

Question: Did you ever believe, given last year's problems on the Mir, that the Shuttle-Mir program would reach its scheduled conclusion with the Mir continuing to fly and still providing a good platform for science?

Culbertson: Oh yes. I expected it to still be flying and still be operating very well. You would like to not be operating on a platform that's on it's last legs, so to speak, and we don't want to even operate the Mir to that point, so we'd like to see the mission conclude while it's still going strong.

Question: With the Shuttle-Mir program winding up, the work of this cooperative effort is being directed into the next phase of the International Space Station program-its on-orbit assembly. Having been involved in this effort for the past four years or more, what do you think is the most valuable lesson phase 1 teaches those who will assemble the next space station?

Culbertson: I think the most valuable lesson is that you're going to have things happen that are going to require problem solving continuously. The best laid plans, the best designed systems, you're still going to have difficulties. Long-duration space flight is hard, and the most valuable lesson we learned from that is to expect it to be difficult, plan for that, train for that, and then be prepared to handle the unexpected.

Question: NASA has announced June 2 as the launch date for Discovery on the final shuttle mission to dock with the Mir. After all that's happened in this program, what do you think you'll be feeling as you watch the hatches close between the two vessels next month, and as the shuttle separates from the Russian space station for the last time?

Culbertson: I'll probably have very mixed feelings. I'm very proud of what everyone has done throughout this program. Folks have put tremendous sacrifices in and time and travel and dedication to the program. We've accomplished a lot. I'll feel a great sense of pride about that, I think. There's a certain sense of retrospect that I think will come from ending a program like that, but I really can't tell you until the event occurs exactly what I'll be feeling, so I'll tell you after that maybe.

Read Frank Culbertson's Oral History