As Muscovites looked back on a weekend of celebrations, estimated to have cost £30 million, the antiquated computer system on the Mir space station broke down once again. The cosmonauts on board, in order to preserve energy, have switched off all systems other than those necessary to keep themselves alive.
The main computer is 11 years old and has broken down three times in as many months. Officials at the Russian space centre outside Moscow have blamed lack of funds for the series of technical problems which have beset the world's only space station since a faulty docking with a cargo vehicle on June 25th.
On each occasion, the Russian cosmonauts and the British-born American astronaut, Mr Michael Foale, have managed to save Mir from spinning completely out of control and officials at mission headquarters were confident yesterday they would do so again.
A spacewalk on Saturday was expected to identify holes in the Spektr module caused by the June collision but the crew, wary of the danger that jagged edges could rupture their space suits, was unable to find any. Further spacewalks planned in order to continue the search have now been postponed as the crew works once more to re-orient and stabilise Mir.
If the space station was, for financial considerations, being coordinated by the equivalent of an aging Amstrad, there was no expense spared on Moscow's 850th birthday celebrations at the weekend.
But things went wrong there, too. Neither of the more spectacular elements of the show came to fruition. Measures were to be taken at £100,000 per day to ensure there was no rain, and an image of the icon of the Virgin Mary of Vladimir was to rise into the sky on Sunday night.
But after a beautiful weekend, the rain started shortly after the elaborate closing ceremony at the former Lenin stadium at Luzhniki in the south of the city on Sunday night. The director of the spectacular finale, Mr Yevgeny Vandal kovski, said the weather caused the abandonment of the laser projection of the Virgin, because the raindrops would have diffused the image. "The rain also caused our traditional Russian dancers to slide, slip and fall across the stage," he said.
Dr Valery Stasenko of Moscow's "Weather Modification Department" was adamant, however, that his team of pilots, who bombarded clouds with iodised silver to make them shed their moisture before reaching the capital, had done a good job.
There was 15 mm of rain in the areas around Moscow and only one millimetre in Moscow itself, he said. "We had indicated the limitations of our operation to the Mayor's office and told him we could not deal with an intense front and high winds."
Whatever about an intense front there was no sign of high winds when the rain came down on the celebrating crowds.
