U.S. Overstates Mir Faults, Officials Say

Russia’s space agency charged that the U.S. has been exaggerating troubles aboard the Mir space station and is losing its nerve over minor glitches. “We would ask the Americans: What kind of experts are you to think about deserting this unique space platform?” said Viktor Blagov, deputy chief of the Russian Space Mission Control Center. The Mir, the world’s only manned space station, has had a run of bad luck: a fire, the failure of the main oxygen-generating system and leaking coolant loops that overheated the main living module. But Russian officials insist those problems can be fixed soon and don’t indicate that the station is unsafe.