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All systems are ready! PBS just released the second episode of its “once upon a time in space” on Tuesday, titled “The Russian Thing,” and we have an exclusive clip from the harrowing chapter that focuses on the near-disasters aboard the Mir space station in 1997.
In addition to the video, we are also proud to share an exclusive interview with the famous British-American NASA astronaut. Michael Foalewhich features prominently in the new segment about the infamous cargo capsule collision on Mir, which caused a decompression incident that turned into a life-threatening crisis.
Coming from British filmmaker James Bluemel and his team who made the award-winning “Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland,” “once upon a time in space” is a four-part exploration of human spaceflight. Its weekly episodes trace pivotal events in the history of space travel through the personal experiences of the astronauts, cosmonauts, and loved ones left behind on Earth from the birth of the space shuttle program to the flourishing of today’s commercial spaceflight industry.
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“James Bluemel is a very insightful director and he was different from others who have interviewed me,” Foale tells Space.
“What I loved about his method was that he would dig up clips from our training or from different times when I was a new astronaut, he looked very young and had a surfer boy haircut. I love windsurfing. He would dig up clips from I don’t know where. And then he would show them to you and then he would say, ‘What do you think?'”
Foale, a distinguished veteran of six space missions who retired in 2013, takes us back to that day on May 25, 1997, when a manual docking maneuver caused an unmanned Progress cargo ship to collide with Mir, opening a large hole in the Russian space station’s Spektr module.
The crew’s brave attempt to stop the pressure leak and save the station is straight out of a Hollywood thriller. With only 23 minutes of oxygen remaining, Foale and cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander ‘Sasha’ Lazutkin were able to repair the damage and prevent the spacecraft from spinning out of control.
“The root cause of the accident was trying to save money,” he explains. “And the root cause was the attempt to perform a manual docking from a long distance for longer than any cosmonaut or astronaut does with and without radar. The radar was built in Ukraine and cost 2 million dollars in that period. And the Russian managers did not want to pay Ukraine 2 million dollars.
“So someone from the Energia corporation – they’re the guilty company – decided that they would try to have this crew at the last minute try to do a manual rendezvous and docking without the radar from a starting point about four miles away. And that test was with a Progress that we had already filled with garbage and that was due to be deorbited into the Pacific Ocean. Before it was finally deorbited, I was going to do this test.”
Unfortunately, that test went horribly wrong because Vasily Tsibliev was unable, based on measurements he was able to make in real time, to determine the exact closing speed of the Progress.
“I couldn’t determine the distance very well, but first you need the distance and then you have to divide it by the time to get the speed,” Foale says. “That was not possible in that situation and I never tried it again. It caused a much higher velocity than Vasily was able to extinguish using the set of thrusters that ignited on the Progress.
“So it bounced, literally bounced after crumpling part of the Spektr module and bending one of the solar panels. The gasket cracked at the base of the solar panel on the module, and that’s where the invisible hole is or was. And that’s where the air was coming out. It was a multiple hit that caused it to float away. And as a team they told us about three days later, because we asked what happened to it. They said, ‘Well, the engine was able to run.’ to reorient itself and deorbit towards the Pacific.'”
After the collision, an adapter was sent to attempt to connect power from the Spektr module to the Mir system.
“Vasily and Sasha were planned to do an internal spacewalk in the Spektr module to reach the cables that Sasha and I had to disconnect to save the station,” adds Foale. “They were going to return during an internal EVA. Vasily, due to the stress of the event, failed the medical exam performed before the spacewalk and they hooked you up to a heart monitor.
“Then a day later, he got a call from the program director, Valery Ryumin, saying, ‘Oh, Michael, you’re on the radio. I’m going to ask you, would you be willing to go in and do the spacewalk inside the Spektr module instead of Vasily?'” Foale recalls. “I just knew that was going to create a big problem between Vasily and me because it was very humiliating for him. And he took all the blame for the collision, which was unfair.”
Foale retired from NASA and space travel after a brilliant 30-year career with the agency and six space shuttle missions, but the adjustment to his lifestyle was a little worrying at first.
“That was a depressing moment when they were like, ‘Oh, you’re done,'” he shares. “I knew I couldn’t survive the envy of my fellow astronauts who are younger than me and who haven’t flown more than once or twice. So I knew I was done in space, at least with NASA. I dreamed of being a guide for astronauts like Peggy Whitson or Michael López-Alegría on an Axiom mission. Those were my dreams initially. I miss space, but I’ve found other things to replace that fun.
“I’ve always been emotionally and romantically turned on by soaring and flying. So living in Texas under the mountains with fantastic stars every night and flying here, it’s not space. It’s not being in a space suit outside the Mir looking at it, but it’s cool. I come back to a much more comfortable situation at night and ride my bike.
“Now that I’m 69, I have a pretty good hobby in old age. But you have to manage. And hey, you have to keep telling yourself that you are one of the luckiest guys alive. I would say that I was naively optimistic about international collaboration in space. The show that James Bluemel has put on, “Once Upon a Time in Space,” in some ways seems like a fairy tale to me when I think back on it.”
The “Once Upon a Time in Space” episode “The Russian Thing” aired on July 21, 2026 at 9:00 pm ET on PBS. PBS.organd the PBS appand the last two chapters will be published on July 28 and August 4.
