Russians endure cosmic misfortune on Mir

“Tsibliyev and Lazutkin have been overtired, literally exhausted by all those accidents, and a weary person can make a mistake,” she told the Itar-Tass news agency.

Olga said the crew – the Russians and American astronaut Michael Foalemade herculean efforts to keep the station running during a series of problems, sometimes working 15 hours a day.

The replacement Russian crew, Anatoly Solovyov and Pavel Vinogradov, docked on mir on August 7. Foale will remain with them on Mir until his replacement arrives in fall.

The station’s new crew may face new troubles. On Tuesday, the U S space agency NASA said the Mir’s water supply may run out in six to eight weeks if its humidity recycling system remains unusable.

Viktor Blagov, Russia’s Deputy Chief of Mission control, told the said that the Mir currently has enough drinking water to last until October.

The space shuttle Atlantis is to bring water when it arrives in late September, on a flight that will give Foale a ride home. In addition, a Russian cargo ship carrying water is scheduled to blast off for the space station October 1, Blagov said.

Normally, humidity aboard Mir is condensed and recycled into drinking water. But antifreeze fumes from leaks months ago in the cooling system may have contaminated the recycled water, Blagov said. The outgoing Mir crew is bringing back water samples to test.

Blagov said Russian space officials were confident the recycled water is safe to drink, because the system’s filters are more than adequate to remove the amount of leaked antifreeze.

The new crew is moving ahead with plans for a difficult repair mission yesterday in the ruptured Spektr module, which was damaged in a collision with a cargo ship in June.