MIRNEWS.270      4 SEPTEMBER 1995

Soyuz-TM22 launched from Baykonur.

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 0900UTC (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 120240UTC S-TM22 came within our range. Gidzenko
reported the successful check of the manual orientation con
trolsystem. All went well. During the pass at 1332UTC Gidzen
ko, sounding very fit, reported that the first 2 orbitcorrec
tions 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 S-TM22 will dock
at the forward docking port (P.Kh.O. -transitionsection), the
-X axis on 5.09.95 at 1030UTC. The last fase of the approach
will take place within our range during MIR-orbit 54543 from
1018-1025UTC. In this period we can expect radiotraffic on the
frequencies: 121.750 Mc (S-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 0824UTC.  

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