Plumbing problems. In his July 15 diary entry, Lebedev described how he woke in the middle of the night to urinate, only to find that the toilet (ASU system) overfill light was on. “If we were home, we could go outside,” he wrote. But that’s not a viable option up here, so I had to hold it for a whole hour while I pumped the urine out of the ASU.” Lebedev had other problems with the water system later in the day: for a time he believed he had pumped waste water into the fresh water, spoiling the entire 500 liter supply.[3]
Debris in the air and cleaning Salyut 7. In his diary for July 23, Lebedev described how dust, trash, food crumbs, and droplets of juice, coffee, and tea floated in Salyut 7’s air. Most eventually ended up on the cheesecloth which covered the intake grills of the station’s air circulation fans. He said that the crew periodically disposed of these and replaced them with new ones. He also described a “wet cleaning” of Salyut 7. Once a week the crew used wet napkins soaked with katamine (a scouring detergent) to wipe the panels, handrails, hatches, control panel surfaces, and table. They also opened the wall panels and vacuumed the cable bundles, pipes, and fan grills.[4]
EVA—space construction experiments. On July 30, after more than a week of preparation, Lebedev and Berezevoi conducted a 2.5 hr EVA. Opening the hatch from the transfer compartment to the station hull produced a outgust of lost screws and bolts, dust, and a pencil. Lebedev first installed a movie camera and a floodlight. Then he replaced samples on the Etalon space exposure experiment, a checkerboard of different materials. He deployed and attached himself to the Yakor foot restraint platform. Once there, he spent
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