Cosmonauts on the Russian Mir space station abandoned a planned spacewalk yesterday after they used the wrong tools and broke three wrenches trying to open an outer hatch, Mission Control officials said.
The failure, the latest in a series of problems on the 12-year-old Mir, left cosmonauts without an exit hatch for spacewalks for at least several weeks, space officials said. But they can still leave Mir in an emergency on the Soyuz escape capsule.
'One of the locks was so strongly sealed by the previous crew that engineer Nikolai Budarin, who I know is a very strong person, broke three wrenches and could not open the last of 10 locks on the hatch,' flight director Mr Vladimir Solovyov told reporters.
Mr Yury Skursky, deputy head of technical analysis at Mission Control, told Reuters the problem arose because Mr Budarin and commander Talgat Musabayev used the wrong tools for the job. 'They didn't use the right tool this time. Earlier they used a stronger tool. This time they had a weaker tool.
'It's on the station somewhere but unfortunately they couldn't find it in time. The situation can be explained that everything is ageing and the lock on the door is not completely standard.'
During the spacewalk, due to have started at 1.30a. m. (Irish time) yesterday, cosmonauts were to have attached a brace to a solar panel damaged last June when Mir collided with a remotely-controlled supply ship. The effort was abandoned a little more than an hour later.
The first glitch yesterday happened when the crew left an air pressure valve in the wrong position. Mission Control radioed instructions for the third man on Mir, NASA astronaut Mr Andy Thomas, to flip the switch, officials said.
'The crew did not act quite correctly and we had to resort to the American's help,' Mr Solovyov said.
Mir's previous crew had shut the hatch especially tightly because it had been leaking, adding to the problem. Mr Solovyov said there were two ways to get around it - 'crude physical force' or dismantling the lock.
The next Mir cargo ship, scheduled to be launched on March 15th, will bring additional tools to open the hatch, officials said. It will take cosmonauts about two weeks to unload the new supplies and prepare for a new spacewalk.
The solar panel which they were to have fastened yesterday is attached to the Spektr module, which has been sealed off from the rest of the station since the accident last year.
Since then, successive crews have restored the power lost from Spektr's damaged solar panels and succeeded in repairing many other troublesome areas of the 12-year-old station, which was originally expected to stay in orbit for only five years.
Last Thursday a valve on a system that measures contaminants overheated and smoke poured into the station.