The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

With the station in free drift, its remaining solar arrays were unable to track the sun and thus generate power. With no new power coming into the system, the existing onboard systems would slowly begin to drain what power was left in the station’s onboard batteries. It would take several hours for the batteries to drain altogether, longer if the crew shut down most of the station’s major systems. Solovyov, his eye already on the approaching end of the comm pass, began instructing Tsibliyev which systems to shut down, and in what order, in the event power levels began dropping while the station was out of contact with the ground.

“We are switching [off] all that is not vitally important,” Tsibliyev said.

“If you have real trouble with SEP” – SEP referred to power levels remaining in the batteries – “the priorities will be the following: first switch off the Elektron, and only in the last moment [switch off] Vozdukh.” The Vozdukh carbon dioxide scrubber was the last thing Solovyov wanted turned off, since the station was already running low on the replacement LiOH canisters.

“Elektron is switched off right now,” said Tsibliyev.

“You should be fine with SEP. Just try to save it, but I don’t think you will be anywhere near to switching off Vozdukh.”

“We’ll be watching the pressure gauge.”

“What’s the temperature right now?”

“It’s quite chilly.”

“You should give [the pressure] time to stabilize.”

“I didn’t get you.”

“The pressure has to stabilize.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the pressure right now?”

“689 and holding.”

The enormity of what had happened overcame Tsibliyev for a moment. “It’s so frustrating, Vladimir Aleexevich,” he blurted out. “It’s a nightmare.”

“That’s all right, Vasily,” replies Solovyov, trying to keep his commander focused. Albertas Versekis, a docking specialist, joined Solovyov at his console. “Now tell Albert chronologically what was happening with the Progress.”

“Everything was going as planned. We were thinking that we should give it some more space for acceleration. We ended up not doing it.”

“All right.”

“I started to put down the lateral velocity. It started to sink down. And then there was permanent braking—”

“Were you braking?”

“Yes, and I was trying to bring it down. I was holding it tightly with my hand to make sure that it passed away from the solar panel. It indeed passed on the side, but then it slightly bent to the left and punched the top solar panel of module O with the needle. Then it touched the attachable cold radiator with its top solar panel on the right side.”

“Did it damage it?”

“Yes, a bit. However it bounced back immediately. It seems the speed was not that great at that moment, and we probably did not have enough energy to brake [the Progress].”

“Got you.”

And then the pass was over. It was 12:42.

The crew were reunited. Foale and Lazutkin smiled but Tsibliyev was silent and dazed. While they waited for the next communications pass, they speculated as to whether the contact between Foale and Tsibliyev had caused the collision. Lazutkin:

“Before Michael hit Vasily with his foot, the Progress was flying straight toward Spektr, its back end pointing forward. [Vasily] took his hand off the controls, and the ship changed its position. As soon as Michael hit Vasily’s hand, [the ship] moved, and it hit Spektr with its side. If the ship had continued flying the way it was flying, it might have been much worse. It would have hit with the sharp edge of the rear, rather than the blunt edge of the side.”

Subsequent examination of the videotape did not show any change in the path of the Progress. Tsibliyev concluded:

“The fact is little things contributed to what happened and we had a collision, that was one of the little things.”

They needed to get the solar arrays pointed back toward the sun. The station was in a slow roll and they needed to stop this. Because the solar arrays were misaligned, the station was running off stored power in the batteries. Four minutes before the next communications pass, the lights went out in the base block, then the rest of the lights went out and the gyrodynes powered down. Their thrusters couldn’t fire without power.