Russian And Frenchman Perform Space Walk

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990416/ts/space_russia_mir_1.html

Friday April 16 8:23 AM ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian and French cosmonaut performed a space walk Friday, successfully launching a small satellite built by French amateur radio enthusiasts from the Russian Mir space station, mission control said.

``It's finished. They launched the satellite,'' spokeswoman Vera Medvedkova said.

She said the two men, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Haignere and Russian Captain Viktor Afanasyev, had run out of time before completing their program, however, and had failed to perform certain scientific research tasks.

Haignere and Afanasyev opened the Mir hatch at 8:37 a.m. (0437 GMT) and were in space for six hours and 19 minutes, more than an hour more than planned, Medvedkova said.

A third crewman, Sergei Avdeyev, remained on board to man the 13-year-old station during the space walk.

During the space walk the two cosmonauts had planned to patch a simulated hole in a panel as part of practice that might later be used to repair a hole in the punctured Spektr module.

Medvedkova said they succeeded insetting up the practice panel but did not finish coating it with airtight material.

The Spektr, one of seven modules on Mir, has been sealed off from the rest of the station since 1997 when a cargo resupply ship collided with it in a near-fatal accident.

Subsequent crews have since repaired much of the aging station but have failed to find the hole or holes in Spektr to patch them.