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Russian and US engineers and scientists were this week taking stock of the damaged Mir space station to see whether power can be restored to its laboratory modules and what experiments — if any — can still be performed. The future of the 11-year-old craft, which has lasted far longer than any other Russian space station, hangs in the balance.

The Mir sustained serious damage last week when an unmanned cargo ship crashed into its Spektr laboratory module during a test of a new manual docking system. The crash damaged one of the station's power-producing solar arrays and opened a small hole in the Spektr, which immediately began leaking its pressurized atmosphere.

That forced the two Mir cosmonauts and a US guest astronaut to disconnect power from three other arrays and seal the module off from the rest of the station. The equipment inside Spektr, roughly half of which was provided by the US space agency NASA, is now in a cold vacuum, and the experiments inside are thought to be lost.

But scientists working on the joint US-Russian research programme will not know for certain until they take an inventory of the equipment that was inside Spektr when the accident occurred. Some is portable and may have been moved elsewhere on the station.

The 1,600 pounds of US-provided equipment inside Spektr includes a large freezer for storing blood samples, a centrifuge and equipment for cardiology investigations. The French national space agency, CNES, is also assessing the status of its equipment inside the module. Russian experiments in Spektr are concerned primarily with Earth observation and atmospheric studies.

Priroda, the laboratory module that contains US crystal growth experiments and other materials-science investigations, was not harmed. But these experiments require much power to run furnaces and other equipment. The now disconnected Spektr solar arrays provided about half the station's total electrical power. These would need to be reconnected to restore Mir's full research capabilities.

“The big unknown for [future] science [on Mir] is how the power shakes out,” says Thomas Sullivan, a NASA scientist working on the joint research programme.

The current plan is for Mir's two cosmonauts to enter Spektr wearing spacesuits in mid-July and try to reconnect the power cables. The crew has never trained for such a job, and no one is sure if the repair is possible.

NASA officials and others were quick to point out that last week's accident had nothing to do with Mir's age. But the Russian space programme is clearly strained to breaking point. It also badly needs the revenue that comes from renting space on Mir.

France has signed a deal for a reported $40 million to send an astronaut to the station in August, and again in 1999. Germany has also paid to use Mir, and the United States is spending $472 million for seven long-term stays by NASA astronauts — two of which have yet to happen.

Last year, 25 per cent of the Russian Space Agency's funding came from renting out Mir, according to an analysis by ANSER Corporation of Washington DC. “Without that [revenue] it will be tough going,” says Stephen Hopkins of ANSER.

Many US space officials worry that money spent patching up Mir will make it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations to the international space station scheduled to begin construction next year.

Meanwhile, James Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), chairman of the House Science Committee, has called on NASA administrator Daniel Goldin not to send another US astronaut to Mir until NASA can certify that the Russian station meets or exceeds US safety standards.