The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

It took almost three minutes for Lazutkin to tear apart fifteen of the eighteen cables. The remaining three cables didn’t have any visible connection points. They were solid and unbreakable. Lazutkin thought of the knife. He retrieved it from his pocket and slashed a thin data cable for one of the NASA experiments. The next moment he slashed a leftover French data cable from one of the Euro-Mir missions. One cable remained. One cable whose removal would allow them to seal the hatch and save the station.

But Lazutkin received a rude shock when he began sawing into the last and thickest of the three cables. Sparks flew up into his face. It was a power cable.

Foale saw a frightened look cross the Russian’s face.

“Sasha, go ahead!” Foale urged. “Cut it!” A beat. “Cut it!”

But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t cut it.

At the moment the Progress struck the station, Mir was just coming into communications range of TsUP. Burrough:

It was at this point that Tsibliyev, still floating anxiously at the command center in base block, heard the TsUP hailing him. Nikolai Nikiforov, the shift flight director, was at the command console in the TsUP. Vladimir Solovyov stood out of sight in a separate control room used for Progress operations. There was static, and for a moment Tsibliyev’s words could not be heard.

“Siriuses!” Nikiforov shouted. “Siriuses!”

Suddenly Tsibliyev’s voice broke through the static. “Yes, yes, we copy! There was no braking. There was no braking. It just stalled. I didn’t manage to turn the ship away. Everything was going on fine, but then, God knows why, it started to accelerate and run into module O, damaged the solar panel. It started to [accelerate], then the station got depressurized. Right now the pressure inside the station is at 700.”

Sirius was Mir’s codename. Module O was Spektr.

Soloyov, immediately realizing what had happened, got on comm. Burrough:

“Guys, where are you now?”

“We are getting into the [Soyuz]…”

Chaos broke out for several moments on the floor of the TsUP as Solovyov and the other controllers tried to determine exactly what was happening aboard the station. The comm broke up for a moment.

“Copy, damn it!” Solovyov barked.

“Oh, hell,” Tsibliyev blurted out. “We don’t know where the leak is.”

“Can you close any hatch?” interjected Nikiforov.

“We can’t close anything,” Tsibliyev said hurriedly. “Here everything is so screwed up that we can’t close anything.”

As Tsibliyev’s words crackled over the auditorium loudspeakers, Keith Zimmerman couldn’t understand anything the commander was saying: he spoke very little Russian. Then, suddenly, his interpreter said, “They hit something.”

Zimmerman wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean?” he said. From the interpreter’s even tone of voice, he guessed that maybe one of the cosmonauts had hit his thumb with a hammer.

“The Progress,” Aleksandr said quietly. “It hit the station. The pressure’s going down.”

Zimmerman went numb. This was not something a 29-year-old MOD assistant was accustomed to hearing.

“Wait, Vasya, what are you doing now?” Nikiforov asked.

“We are getting ready to leave. The pressure is already at 690. It continues to drop.”

“Can you switch on any blowers?”

“I think we can.”

“Open all existing oxygen tanks.”

“Sasha,” Tsibliyev hollered to Lazutkin, “have you closed the hatch?”

Lazutkin’s reply was drowned out as the station’s master alarm continued braying.

“Vasya,” said Solovyov, “what are you doing now?”

“DSD has turned on. We managed to close the hatch to module O.” This was wishful thinking: as Tsibliyev spoke, Lazutkin still hadn’t cleared the last cable from the hatch. DSD was a depressurization sensor.

“Module O. Has [the Progress] run into module O?”

“Yes, it hit module O.”

“Is the hatch closed right now?”

“Sasha is closing it right now.”

“What’s happening with the pressure?”

“DSD turned on when pressure dropped down to 690.”

Solovyov interjected. “Can you pass through [the node] right now? We should have extra [oxygen] tanks somewhere in TSO.”

“I know that,” said Tsibliyev. TSO refers to the air lock at the end of the Kvant 2 module.

Solovyov’s call for Tsibliyev to retrieve one of the station’s pumpkin-size oxygen cylinders was a standard response to depressurization scenarios in both Russian and American simulations; until this moment it had never been tried in an actual crisis. Releasing oxygen into the Mir’s atmosphere, Zimmerman realized, meant Solovyov had decided to begin “feeding the leak” – that is, replacing air that had already begun to whistle through whatever hole the Progress had poked in the hull of the Spektr module. Feeding the leak wouldn’t save the station, but it should give the crew precious extra minutes. How many depended on how fast the station was losing air.

“So open them up,” Solovyov ordered.