![]() The ageing Mir, which “smelt like a garage”, as Foale recalls, but thrummed with Russian disco music, would orbit Earth for another four years before at last being decommissioned. And it was Foale, the only American on board (at first suspected by the cosmonauts of being a spy) who came up with the winning move. Instead, the three-man crew would carry out a daring plan to save the station now spinning out of control. Russian space rules decreed less than 30 minutes of oxygen meant abandon ship, so Foale prepared the escape shuttle. Twenty-four minutes, according to the pressure gauge. Because the aluminium is only three millimetres thick.”įortunately, the air leak was small: they had minutes, not seconds. “For a moment, I thought, we’re dead, it’s torn us open. As the station shook, sirens blared and Foale’s ears started popping. Moments earlier, an unmanned supply ship had slammed into Mir (“right where I slept actually,” says Foale, now retired), tearing a hole in its side and damaging its solar panels. They were on the Russian space station Mir, then the only station in orbit, and the worst space collision in history was unfolding. This was the dilemma facing NASA’s Mike Foale and two Russian cosmonauts in 1997. What do you do with your 24 minutes of remaining oxygen? Do you float as fast as you can to the escape capsule, or try and repair the leak? You’re on a leaking space station hundreds of kilometres from Earth.
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