Mir forced to abandon robot camera

LONDON, Dec 18: The jinxed Mir space station was last night forced to abandon in space a 21st century robot camera that malfunctioned withi...

LONDON, Dec 18: The jinxed Mir space station was last night forced to abandon in space a 21st century robot camera that malfunctioned within hours of its release. The German flying camera, Inspector’, designed to make remote maintenance checks on the outer covering of a new international orbital station in the 21st century, failed to respond properly to remote commands from the Mir crew, reports from Korolyov, Russia, said.

To avoid collision, the mission control ordered the crew to scrap plans for the camera to fly around the Mir and take pictures and asked them to abandon it in space. Mir, meanwhile, was retreating from Inspector.

Inspector was to remain in orbit for some time with the German ground-based satellite tracking system maintaining contact with it to try and examine the fault in the next few weeks. The cosmonauts released the Inspector camera from one of the airlocks of the unmmaned Russian Progress freight craft after the latter had taken up its position some 500 metres from Mir, which orbits the earth every couple of hours.

After making its way into space for over half an hour, the metre-long cylinder released its own engine at 0737 GMT and was expected to spend time making practice flights around progress, coming no closer than 100 metres, and then to inspect and tape Mir’s outer casing. The satellite camera, built by Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA), was expected to be launched in the year 2001 at the proposed international space station, Alpha, the first parts of which are scheduled to be launched next year. The Inspector camera weighed 72 kg and was 36.6 inches long.