
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 18, 1992                   TAG: 9203180102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN                                LENGTH: Short

RUSSIAN RETURNING TO EARTH AT LAST

Russia launched the first cosmonauts of its own Tuesday and prepared for the return of a 33-year-old engineer parked in orbit since the Soviet Union's collapse.

A three-man capsule crew is to dock Thursday with the orbiting Mir space station. The Russians are to relieve Cmdr. Alexander Volkov and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev.

The saga of Volkov and Krikalev, who still have the red Soviet flag stitched to their jerseys, is unique in the history of space flight, because the country that placed them in orbit has since ceased to exist.

Krikalev, who is married and has a 2-year-old son, lifted off last May and was supposed to land in the autumn.

But changes in the scheduling of missions left him with no qualified replacement. He marks 10 months in orbit today and is to return to earth March 25 with Maj. Klaus-Dietrich Flade, a German test pilot who is a paying guest on the mission launched Tuesday, and Volkov, who came to the Mir in October.

Krikalev "probably cannot conceive what life is like here now," Alexander Kaleri, the engineer's replacement, mused during a preflight news conference.

Even Krikalev's hometown - Leningrad in the Soviet geography - now has its original name, St. Petersburg.

Flade rejected widespread press speculation that Krikalev is severely depressed. But he acknowledged that both men on the Mir, with whom he has had frequent radio contact, are overjoyed at "the possibility of coming back to Earth."

by CNB