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Launch crew—Vasili Tsibliyev, Alexandr Serebrov, Jean-Pierre Haignere/France Crew code name—Sirius
Landing crew—Vasili Tsibliyev, Alexandr Serebrov Crew code name—Sirius
At 7:37:11 a.m. Moscow time (MT), on January 14, Soyuz-TM 17 separated from the forward port of the Mir station. At 7:43:59 a.m., the TsUP ordered Tsibliyev to steer Soyuz-TM 17 to within 15 m of the Kristall module to begin photography of the APAS-89 docking system. At 7:46:20 a.m., Tsibliyev complained that Soyuz-TM 17 was handling sluggishly. Serebrov, standing by for photography in the orbital module, then asked Tsibliyev to move the spacecraft out of the station plane because it was coming close to one of the solar arrays. In Mir, Viktor Afanasyev ordered Valeri Polyakov and Yuri Usachyov to evacuate to the Soyuz-TM 18 spacecraft. At 7:47:30 a.m., controllers in the TsUP saw the image from Soyuz-TM 17’s external camera shake violently, and Serebrov reported that Soyuz-TM 17 had hit Mir. The TsUP then lost communications with Mir and Soyuz-TM 17. Intermittent communications were restored with Soyuz-TM 17 at 7:52 a.m. Voice communications with Mir were not restored until 8:02 a.m. Inspection of Soyuz-TM 17 indicated no serious damage. In this connection, the Russians revealed that they had studied contingency reentries by depressurized spacecraft in the wake of the Soyuz 11 accident. The Mir cosmonauts did not feel the impact, though the station’s guidance system registered angular velocity and switched to free-
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