The Story of Space Station Mir (Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration) by David M. Harland

Author:David M. Harland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-14T03:02:00+00:00

Toehiro Akiyama (left), Musa Manarov and Viktor Afanasayev.

When Soyuz-TM 11 docked at Mir's front port on 4 December, it delivered Viktor Afanasayev, Musa Manarov and Toehiro Akiyama, who was making a `fee-paying' visit. In general, the backups for one main expedition flew the next. Afanasayev had backed up Soyuz-TM 10 with Vitali Sevastyanov. They had previously trained for the flight in 1989 that had been cancelled following the decision to leave the complex temporarily vacant. However, two months before Soyuz-TM 10 was due for launch Sevastyanov had been grounded by the doctors and Manarov (who had spent a year on Mir) had been assigned instead. This was Afa- nasayev's first flight. The fact that Akiyama was the chief foreign news editor for the Tokyo Broadcasting System gave rise to resentment in the Soviet media, which had hoped to see one of its own members flown first. The stereotypical Japanese tourist, Akiyama brought with him half a dozen cameras and a hundred rolls of film to supplement the television equipment that had already been ferried up. He was to make live television broadcasts whenever the complex was in communications range of Japan, which it was for up to ten minutes on favourable passes. Akiyama suffered motion sickness easily. During the two-day rendezvous he remained strapped in his couch, and on Mir he never felt comfortable. He had several experiments. Six Japanese tree frogs had been brought to record their adaptation to weightlessness - they had tiny suckers on their feet, and the objective was to determine whether the suckers enabled them to retain normal locomotion. A medical experiment for Tokyo University involved him wearing a cap incorporating sensors to measure the electrical activity of his brain, together with the state of his respiratory system. In addition, he regularly conducted a standard psychomotor test in which he moved his hands in a predetermined pattern while keeping his eyes shut. Meanwhile, experiments were set up involving wheat and barley seeds and a ginseng tissue culture, the Vita biotechnology experiment cultivated protein compounds, and Rekomb grew hybrid cells to be used later to make biologically active substances on Earth. On 10 December Manakov, Strekalov and Akiyama left in Soyuz-TM 10.

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