Colliding with Mir

Twenty-four years ago this week, a Progress resupply spacecraft collided with the Russian Mir Space Station. What was meant to be a routine procedure ended up being anything but that. The Spektr module was damaged by the collision and with the hull of that module compromised, the station began to lose atmosphere.

Thankfully the two Russian cosmonauts and British-American Astronaut on the station were able to seal off the damaged module.

They would spend the next few days fighting power losses, a spinning station, and an increasing amount of condensation inside the Mir. This NASA photograph shows some of the damage to Mir. It was taken during STS-86 in September of 1997, a few months after the mishap.

Mike Foale’s oral history interview that was part of the Shuttle-Mir history project gives us a firsthand account of just what it was like in the aftermath of the collision. After the initial collision and prepping the Soyuz capsule for an emergency return to Earth, the crew began to do what they could to mitigate the loss of atmosphere.

After a few minutes spent trying to get a hatch to seal off the damaged module, the crew was finally able to get a hatch in place. Foale recalls that “there is a leak on the other side of this’, so I knew at this point we had isolated the leak, because I could feel the hatch holding in and then the…