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Sharman

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18 May 1991 12:50 GMT. Landing Date: 1991-05-26 10:03:44. Flight Time: 7.88 days. Alternate Name: Soyuz TM-12 (Sharman). Flight Up: Soyuz TM-12. Flight Back: Soyuz TM-11. Call Sign: Ozon (Ozone ). Crew: Sharman. Backup Crew: Mace. Program: Mir.

Of note: First British astronaut. Soyuz TM-12 carried Mir Expedition EO-09 crew Anatoli Artsebarski and Sergei Krikalyov, together with Briton Helen Sharman to Mir. This was the second commercial flight to Mir, this time with a British passenger. The sponsoring British consortium was not quite able to come up with money, however. Flight continued at Soviet expense with very limited UK experiments. Sharman returned to earth aboard Soyuz TM-11 with the EO-8 crew on May 26.

Narrative (adapted from D S F Portree's Mir Hardware Heritage, NASA RP-1357, 1995)

On May 20, 1991, the EO-8 crew welcomed aboard Mir the EO-9 crew of Anatoli Artsebarski and Sergei Krikalev (on his second visit to the station), accompanied by British cosmonaut-researcher Helen Sharman. Sharman was aboard as part of Project Juno, a cooperative venture partly sponsored by British private enterprise.

Sharman’s experimental program, which was designed by the Soviets, leaned heavily toward life sciences. A bag of 250,000 pansy seeds was placed in the Kvant 2 EVA airlock, a compartment not as protected from cosmic radiation as other Mir compartments. Sharman also contacted nine British schools by radio and conducted high-temperature superconductor experiments with the Elektropograph-7K device. Sharman commented that she had difficulty finding equipment on Mir as there was a great deal more equipment than in the trainer in the cosmonaut city of Zvezdny Gorodok.

Krikalev commented that, while Mir had more modules than it had had the first time he lived on board, it did not seem less crowded, as it contained more equipment. Krikalev also noted that some of the materials making up the station’s exterior had faded and lost color, but that this had had no impact on the station’s operation.

During a communication session with a British girls’ school on May 21, Sharman commented that Mir was experiencing solar array problems because of the station’s changing orientation. Late that day the level of background noise on the station suddenly fell from the customary 75 decibels as fans, circulating pumps, and other equipment shut down. The lights began to fade. A computer in the orientation system had failed, preventing the solar arrays from tracking on the Sun, and causing Mir to drain its batteries. Sharman stated that Afanaseyev and Manarov told her such power problems had occurred before. When it reentered sunlight, the station was turned to recharge its batteries.

The EO-8 crew returned uneventfully to earth on May 26 with Sharman.

• 1991 May 18 - Soyuz TM-12  Crew: Artsebarsky, Krikalyov, Sharman. Spacecraft: Soyuz TM. Payload: Soyuz TM 11F732 s/n 62. Mass: 7,150 kg (15,760 lb). Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Vehicle: Soyuz 11A511U2. Duration: 144.64 days. Perigee: 389 km (241 mi). Apogee: 397 km (246 mi). Inclination: 51.60 deg. Period: 92.40 min.

  Docked with Mir. Mir Expedition EO-09. Carried Anatoli Artsebarski, Sergei Krikalev, Helen Sharman to Mir; returned Artsebarski, crew of Soyuz TM 8 to Earth. Second commercial flight with paying British passenger. Sponsoring British consortium was not quite able to come up with money, however. Flight continued at Soviet expense with very limited UK experiments.

• 1991 May 26 - Landing of Soyuz TM-11 

  Soyuz TM-11 landed at 10:03 GMT with the crew of Afanasyev, Manarov and Sharman aboard.

• USAF Satellite Database, USAF Institute of Technology, 1995. Accessed at: ftp://archive.afit.af.mil/pub/space/.

• McDowell, Jonathan, Jonathan's Space Home Page, Harvard University, 1997-present. Jonathan McDowell's complete on-line listing of all objects orbited and over 20,000 rocket launches Accessed at: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html.

• Oberg, James, Red Star in Orbit, Random House, New York, 1981. ISBN: 0394514297. Oberg's book was, at its time, the most accurate, and still the most lively account of the Soviet manned program. More at amazon.com...

• JPL Mission and Spacecraft Library, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1997. Accessed at: http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/home.html.