SPACE: THE COSMONAUT COMES CLEAN: I'M A MIR MORTAL

THE COSMONAUT COMES CLEAN: I'M A MIR MORTAL

So it wasn't the fault of the commander with an aching heart, after all. In an exclusive interview with TIME, cosmonaut ALEXANDER LAZUTKIN revealed that it was he--not Russian commander VASILY TSIBLIYEV or NASA astronaut MICHAEL FOALE--who accidentally disconnected the fateful cable on board Mir in mid-July, sending the Russian space station into its second dance with death of the summer. "It was my fault," Lazutkin said softly, sipping coffee in his cramped two-room apartment on Moscow's northeast edge. "It was at night, and I was in the process of undoing something like 50, 60 or 70 cables. I don't even...

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