SB SPACE @ ARL $ARLS002
ARLS002 Mir gets reprieve with next crew to be all hams

ZCZC AS02
QST de W1AW
Space Bulletin 002  ARLS002
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington, CT  January 9, 1998
To all radio amateurs

SB SPACE ARL ARLS002
ARLS002 Mir gets reprieve with next crew to be all hams

The 12-year-old Russian Mir space station may stay in orbit until
the first components of the International Space Station are in place
in 1999.  That's a few months longer than Mir was supposed to stay
up.  The first ISS units are set to be launched later this year.
Hams are scheduled to be among the first crew members to populate
the ISS, but the US presence aboard Mir comes to an end this June.

Us astronaut David Wolf, KC5VPF, now aboard Mir, is scheduled to be
replaced later this month by Australian-born US astronaut Andy
Thomas, KD5CHF.  Two new Russian crew members, both hams, are due to
arrive at month's end.  The Russian cosmonauts are Talgat Musabayev,
RO3FT, and Nikolai Budarin, RV3FB.  Wolf has been on Mir since late
September.  Thomas will work aboard Mir until June.

Wolf's research schedule has allowed him little spare time to use
the ham radio equipment aboard Mir.  The packet system aboard the
space station has been experiencing problems because the crew has
not had time to set up the correct parameters for the new TNC aboard
Mir.  This week, Wolf, 41, monitored and filmed operations from
inside Mir's main module as his two cosmonaut crewmates conducted a
space walk to check a leaky hatch and to retrieve some equipment.
On January 14, Wolf and cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov will do a
spacewalk to recover some experiments.

The SAFEX repeater has been active on an intermittent basis.  The
crew has turned off the CTCSS tone feature of the repeater, making
it easier for weak stations to access the repeater.  However, this
also means the repeater may transmit noise and occasionally time
out.
NNNN
/EX