Whether there would be time for forensic work before the spacecraft died was unclear—something Liebergot understood better than anyone else. It was time, he knew, to ask the question that had been playing around the edge of his mind for the past ten minutes—and, he suspected, was on a lot of...

It can be oddly peaceful inside a dying spacecraft. That was not something Michael Foale ever suspected—and with good reason. When you’re inside a spacecraft that’s dying, you’re likely to die right along with it. But now that Foale was in that very situation, after six weeks aboard Russia’s Mir...