Mir Status Report 20 September 1997

NASA MIR PROGRAM/Mir 24 / NASA 5 Status Date: Saturday, September 20, 1997// MD 46/128
Experiment Hardware / PUP and MIPS checkout – Mike informed the ground crew that Priroda had not been powered up yet , therefore he would have to slip the PUP and MIPS checkout to a later date. Further discussions with the shift flight director revealed that the reason the Priroda had not been powered was due to the ground’s inability to issue commands to the Priroda’s Master Computer. It is believed that the reason for this is condensation in connectors. There is a concern that issuing commands to route power to the PUPs may result in an erroneous command being issued by the Master Computer due to condensation.
The computer must be deactivated before the connectors can be cleaned and the specialists needed to issue the commands for deactivation have gone home for the weekend. We have emphasized the absolute requirement that the Priroda be fully functional and the PUP, MIM and BTS systems be fully checked out prior to launch of STS-86. The shift flight director has made every effort to get in contact with the Priroda systems specialists, but so far has had no success.
There is one gentleman who has been located who is a general module expert who is tried to give the crew commands to shut down a portion of the Master Computer and that was unsuccessful. Further commands will be issued by the ground this evening.