The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Lazutkin had spotted the Progress. Until this point Mir’s massive solar arrays had blocked his line of sight. But now he saw the ship approaching fast, slightly below the station. From his vantage point in base block, it appeared to be heading for an imminent collision.

“I see it!” Lazutkin said.

“Where is it?” Tsibliyev asked.

“It’s close!” Lazutkin replied.

This was as technical as Lazutkin’s response got. He remembered later: “I saw it in full size. All the solar arrays, the antennae, everything. That’s when I told Jerry to go to Soyuz.”

Linenger propelled himself down the length of Kristall as quickly as he could. Reaching the node, he saw Tsibliyev sitting at the console, jerking at the TORU joysticks. The Sony monitor still showed nothing but snow.

“What’s it doing?” Tsibliyev shouted.

Lazutkin turned to Linenger. “Get in the spacecraft,” he said quickly. “Get ready to evacuate.”

As Linenger turned, he saw Tsibliyev furiously manipulating the TORU joysticks. He realized the Russian was attempting to fly Progress blind. Swiftly, Linenger folded himself into the Soyuz capsule and immediately began pulling out the various cables and ventilation tubes that connected the craft to Mir. Floating up into the node, he saw Tsibliyev still in base block, sitting before the monitor. He appeared to be on the verge of panic.

“What’s it doing?” the Russian shouted.

Lazutkin’s reply was unclear. Crouched at the mouth of the Soyuz, grabbing and disconnecting cables as fast as he could, Linenger glanced over his shoulder to see Tsibliyev jump back from the console and check the portal himself. Then he sprang back to the monitor and pulled at the black joysticks once more.

“What’s it doing?” Tsibliyev shouted at Lazutkin.

At TsUP the NASA ground team were watching the picture from the camera on board the Progress.

Tony Sang and his team crowded around the monitors in the NASA suite to watch Tsibliyev redock the Progress. Sang wasn’t especially worried about the maneuver. From conversations with Viktor Blagov he understood – incorrectly – that the Russians had handled these kinds of long-distance manual dockings on several previous occasions with no problem.

In front of him, Sang’s monitor showed video being shot by the camera aboard Progress M-33. Gone were the overlaying targeting sights that they normally would see; the sights had been unavailable since communication with the Altair Satellite was cut off. Still, the moment the image from Progress flickered onto his monitor, Sang realized something was amiss.

“This doesn’t look right,” he said.

The screen should show Mir floating in space as the Progress approached. Instead the monitor in NASA’s office showed Earth in the distance. There was no sign of the station.

“This doesn’t look like any Progress docking I’ve seen before,” Sang mused aloud.

As the minutes tick by, Sang and his group kept waiting for Mir to come into view.

“Where is it?” someone said.

After about ten minutes, with no sighting of Mir, the picture winked out. Several moments after that, as Mir once again came into range of a Russian ground station. Tsibliyev’s voice came over the comm. Sang and Tom Marshburn watched intently as one of their interpreters, a temporary replacement they didn’t know well, busily scribbled down what the commander was saying. As usual they had no sense of the words or even the tone of the cosmonaut’s message.

“The commander is really excited,” the interpreter said.

“What do you mean?” asked Marshburn.

“I don’t know, but he’s really, really excited,” the interpreter replied. “Something’s going on.”

New to the job, and to the technical terms Tsibliyev was using, the replacement interpreter was unable to decipher precisely what had happened. Sang realized Tsibliyev was angrily complaining about some kind of malfunction on his screen; apparently it wasn’t working. Curious, Sang and Marshburn hustled down to the floor to find out what was going on.

The Progress missed.

Barely fifteen seconds before impact, as Linenger scrunched himself into the Soyuz to prepare for emergency evacuation, Tsibliyev’s screen suddenly activated, and he realized the Progress would not hit the station. The screen, broadcasting from the camera aboard the Progress, showed Mir uncomfortably large and close. But from this vantage point Tsibliyev saw the Progress would pass underneath the station, narrowly avoiding a collision.

Crouching by the base block window, Lazutkin watched the ship sail by harmlessly. He guessed the distance at two hundred meters or less.

Emerging into the node, Linenger saw Tsibliyev dramatically sag in relief. All the pent-up energy in the commander’s shoulders seemed to drain from his body as he leant heavily on the TORU controls. For the longest time no one said anything.

Tony Sang’s interpreter was right. Tsibliyev was angry.