This freighter docked to Mir's aft docking port (Kvant-1) on 13.10.93 at 2325 UTC. The approach and docking took place in the automatic mode under observation of the crew. The docking took place a little bit later than expected after Mir's pass in orbit 43764 from 2309-2314 UTC. During this pass the transmitters of Progress-M20 still could be monitored on 922.755 mc and in the 166 and 165 mc bands. Mir also worked with packet radio on 145.550 mc. During the passes in orb. 43765 (14.01 0043-0050 UTC) and 43766 (0221-0227 UTC) the crew and TsUP spoke about the just arrived freighter. The crew was satisfied: the ship was clean and they got the badly needed dairy-products, which they ordered only recently. Progress-M20 has a V.B.K. (ballistic return capsule) on board. The arrival of the Progress-M20 is good news for the Dutch University in Nijmegen for she safely delivered their experiments in the Biokrist-package.

PROGRESS-M19:

To enable Progress-M20 to dock with the complex the Progress-M19 had to disappear. Nowadays the Russians undock the old freighter as soon as they are sure about the right orbit and the good functioning of the new one. So Progress-M19 separated from Mir on 12.10.1993 at 1759 UTC. Before burning up in the atmosphere Progress-M19 jettisoned the V.B.K. and this landed safely in the designated area on 13.10.93 at 0022 UTC. The crew on board Mir did not go asleep but observed the whole operation. The were enthusiastic about this interesting event. They saw how the engines of Pr-19 worked, how the V.B.K. separated from Progress-M19 and they even could see the burning up of the rest of the freighter. They made a lot of video-films and images. During the pass in 43751, on 13.10.93 at 0135 UTC they reported about these observations to TsUP. In the course of 13.10 they transmitted their films to TsUP via the geostationary satellite Altair.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.