This ship with on board the crew for the 20d Main Expedition to Mir and the Euromir'95 cosmonaut Thomas Reiter started flawlessly from Baykonur on 3.09.1995 at 0900 UTC (for the connoisseurs: 09.00.23.115). The Russians are the captain Yuriy Pavlovich Gidzenko, making his first spaceflight, Sergey Vasilyevich Avdeyev, making his 2d flight. The crew uses the call 'Uran', so for Gidzenko, Avdeyev and Reiter, respectively Uran-1, -2 and -3. The 1st day of the 2 days autonomous flight to Mir passed without any problems. Already during the 3d orbit at 120240 UTC Soyuz-TM22 came within our range. Gidzenko reported the successful check of the manual orientation control system. All went well. During the pass at 1332 UTC Gidzenko, sounding very fit, reported that the first 2 orbit corrections had been performed well. All systems worked without hitches and the health and mood of the crew were excellent.

Planned linkup with Mir-station:

If all continues to go according to plan the Soyuz-TM22 will dock at the forward docking port (P.Kh.O. -transition section), the -X axis on 5.09.95 at 1030 UTC. The last phase of the approach will take place within our range during Mir-orbit 54543 from 1018-1025 UTC. In this period we can expect radio traffic on the frequencies: 121.750 Mc (Soyuz-TM22) and 143.625 Mc (Mir). It is not possible to predict whether the old Altair on 17 dgs West will be used or not for this good old 'geo' did not show up since 26.08.95 0824 UTC.

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