Kamanin is disturbed by the decision. He recalls that in 1961 flight of the Vostok with two or three crew was discussed, with flights to occur in 1962-1963. But at that time Korolev cancelled the plans, saying the Soyuz would be used for such missions. Now Soyuz will not fly until 1965, and he has changed his tune. Furthermore, the modified Vostok is inherently risky, with no way to save the crew in case of a launch vehicle malfunction in the first 40 seconds of flight. Unlike Vostok, the three crew will not have individual ejection seats or parachutes to give them a chance of escape in the event of an abort. The crew will be subject to 10 to 25 G's during an abort. There is no assurance the environmental control system can be modified to handle three crew. It all seems very unsafe, and Kamanin believes the six consecutive successful Vostok flights have given Korolev's engineers a false sense of the safety of the Vostok system. Kamanin is perplexed. How does he plan to convert a single-place spacecraft to a three-place spacecraft in a few months? Korolev has no clear answers, but asks for the cosmonauts' support of the scheme.
Several previous action assignments were reviewed:
The Board concluded that the material changes made in the CM had resulted in a safe configuration in both the tested atmospheres. The Board agreed "that there will always be a degree of risk associated with manned space flight," but the risk of fire "was now substantially less than the basic risks inherent in manned space flight."
Among decisions reached were:
It was clear the Russians were not happy with the enthusiasm and attention before and that some of them would prefer a little bit soviet-like publicity: so exuberant joy when a risky attempt was successful , but silence after a failure.
What went wrong? Just when Padalka transmitted the command to unfold the reflector packages, the Progress-M40 got a command from earth to deploy a Kurs antenna. One slip of the reflector got stuck behind this antenna and the unfolding process stopped. After the retraction of the antenna and a motor burn of the Progress-M40 the reflector came free, but a second attempt to deploy the reflector with the centrifugal forces of the spinning around its X-axis Progress-M40 failed. After analyses and nightly deliberations the Russians decided to blow off the experiment and to put the Progress-M40 on a destruction course.
On 4.02.1999 at 09.59.32 UTC the freighter separated from the aft (Kvant-1) docking port of Mir.
On 5.02.1999 at 1016 UTC Progress-M40 got the impulse to bring it back into the atmosphere. At 1110 UTC Progress-M40 burnt up over a designated area in the Pacific East of New-Zealand.
These began with the reception between 1302 and 13.03.30 UTC of the 922.755 mc beacon and telemetry transmitter of Progress-M40. This was for me the prove that Progress-M40 was flying autonomously. Mir's radio conversations during the following passes of Mir and Progress-M40 made it clear that the experiment was not proceeding according to plan. Padalka reported hat he had switched off several systems and obviously the crew transferred the control of Progress-M40 to TsUP.
Avdeyev continuously reported to TsUP the distances between Mir and Progress-M40 with the times. During the pass in orbit 74054, 1439-1440 UTC, he reported that at 13.54.40 UTC the distance had been 4090 Meters. At about 1439 UTC the distance was approx. 2 KM. For the measurements Avdeyev had to soar from port-hole to port-hole. Regularly he reported that it was difficult to track and to observe the Progress-M40 due to the sunlight shining in his eyes and now and then Mir's solar panels hampered him. Possibly Avdeyev had to report the distances to the man at TsUP who controlled the Progress-M40.
Now and then the UKW-2 (130.165 mc) was in use for communications. During the pass in orb. 74055, (1606-1615 UTC) he continued to report the distances. One of my friends, radio-amateur Hans van Dijk (NL number 10204), picked up images of the Progress-M40 transmitted to earth with SSTV on 145.985 mc.
The failure of the experiment was discussed during radio traffic. Padalka did not make a fuss about this, but he was disappointed about the fact that the crew had not been able to carry out their work. He expressed his satisfaction about the fact that the control of Progress-M40 with the TORU and the transfer of commands for the experiment worked flawlessly. He regretted the fact that they had installed all equipment to film and photograph the events in vain. He joked that they might be able to try it again in 6 years. About this all and the plans with this experiment for the next day he had a conversation with Flight control chief V.A. Solovyov.
During the communication window in orb. 74057/58, 1915-1926 UTC, the crew, certainly unintended, startled the flight controller at TsUP by switching off the transmitter. This man possibly thought that something was wrong (in fact a free flying freighter not far from Mir!) and reacted immediately. Avdeyev told him that all was well on board.
Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.
The satellite rotated at 15 rpm, imaging by reconstructing the Fourier components from the time modulation of the solar x-ray flux through a set of 9 grids each 9 cm in diameter. It was expected to make images with a resolution of 2 arcseconds at 40 keV energies and 36 arcseconds at 1 MeV energies. The launch delays meant that HESSI missed some of the best flares at solar max.