(12 Dec 1997) English/Nat
American astronaut David Wolf and his Russian crewmates aboard the Mir space station spoke to Earth on Friday with the message that things are going well.
Wolf said the crew is running a full schedule of science experiments and that the troubled spacecraft has been working just fine.
The crew are planning to celebrate the holidays in style - even if there is no champagne on board.
American astronaut David Wolf showed off how well his Russian was to the rest of the world on Friday as the latest pictures from the Space Station Mir were beamed to earth.
Looking relaxed, the crew are planning to celebrate the upcoming holidays in style.
Wolf, who is Jewish, has already received a menorah as a Hanukkah gift from his sister that was delivered by a Russian supply ship in October.
While there is no champagne on board, the commander, Anatoly Solovyov, said there was still the desire to celebrate New Year.
Alcohol is banned from U-S-based ships, but the Russians are more lenient. There have even been confirmed reports in the past about vodka on board Mir.
Speaking to earth, Wolf said everything on board was just fine and he was learning a lot from his Russian crewmates.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Oh well could say a few introductory remarks. First I will introduce Anatoly Solovyov, our commander, and Pavel Vinogradov our flight engineer and these are two cosmonauts who have shown me just how much work and what kind of repair work and installations can actually be done in orbit, and it's an eye opener. It's been a pleasure working with them, we are learning by the hour."
SUPER CAPTION: David Wolf, US Astronaut
Wolf said he feels safe aboard Mir and noted that the station has been running well since his arrival in late September.
That has allowed him to devote most of his time to science work, in particular an experiment to grow three-dimensional kidney and nerve tissue.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"As you know the bio-reactor and three-dimensional tissue culture in general are one of my pet areas of interest and I think an area of great potential and NASA and scientists and space in general. And we have done an important group of projects related to that where we have grown three-dimensional tissues of a number of types and taking them through a few generations. And we have learnt some ways not to do it also but I see every reason to continue the work and be very hopeful and I am very optimistic it will prove to be as important as we think it will. In terms of doing science in space, we get to do the work, think about it, send data to the ground to the scientists on the ground, react and continue the experiments; maybe in a different direction, or a lot different direction. This is way we do science on the earth in a laboratory and we are converging on doing that type of science in space. It is very dependent on the interaction of the earth space researchers and the space hands on people at the moment."
SUPER CAPTION: David Wolf, US Astronaut
Earlier in the year, there were problems galore aboard Mir including a fire in February, a cargo-ship collision in June, computer breakdowns, cooling-system leaks and oxygen-generator malfunctions.
Wolf's replacement, NASA astronaut Andrew Thomas, is scheduled to arrive on Mir in late January aboard the space shuttle Endeavour.
He will be the last American to live on the Russian station.
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