MIRNEWS.269       26 AUGUST 1995

Euromir'95: The launch from Baykonur of Soyuz-TM22 is still on
schedule for 3.09.95 at 0900UTC. S-TM22 will carry the re-

liefcrew (the 20th Main expedition) to the MIR-station toge
ther with the ESA astronaut, the German, Thomas Reiter. 
The Russian crew consists of the MIR's captain Yuriy Gidzenko,
who will make his first spaceflight, and the board-engineer
Sergey Avdeyev, who already made 1 spaceflight. This crew and
the stand-in crew flew to Baykonur on 23.08.95 to accomplish
their final training.

MIR: During the past weeks the complex passed during the
nighthours. Meanwhile the passes shifted to the afternoon en
eveninghours. The clear skies during the evenings made good
visual observations  possible. The cosmonauts executed a lot
of experiments and repairs. They installed new gyrodynes in
Module-D and resolved airseal problems. Probably one or more
gyrodyna cases showed leaks. The cosmonauts solved this pro
blem using a lute named 'germetik'. They did this by putting
this lute around some leaking electric sockets.

Scarce information: During the past weeks it was difficult for
me to maintain sufficient grip on the MIR-operations. This due
to familycircumstances, the nightpasses of the complex and the
capricious behaviour of the geostationary satellite Altair.
(see File ALTC2054.TXT.)

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202