SPACE

By ANDREW MEIER

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 remember now how many."

Engineer Lazutkin and Tsibliyev, who returned to Earth last month, face fierce recriminations and quite possibly a stiff fine. Last week VALERY RYUMIN, the Russian head of the Mir shuttle program and the deputy head of Energiya, the firm that built Mir, blamed the cosmonauts for Mir's troubled summer. But within days other top Russian space officials came to their defense. Lazutkin says he's willing to abide by the conclusions of a joint U.S.-Russian investigation that will deliver its judgment later this month, but he remains convinced that Russia's earthly shortfalls contributed to Mir's difficulties. "The collision and all that went wrong afterward were caused by a combination of factors, both on the station and on Earth," he said. "On Earth it's a cliche to say 'To err is human.' How come the same logic doesn't apply up there?"

--By Andrew Meier