WORLD IN BRIEF : SOVIET UNION : Cosmonauts Fix Craft’s Faulty Hatch

Two cosmonauts working outside their space station successfully closed a balky hatch that had dangerously prolonged their previous space walk earlier this month. Tass news agency reported that ground controllers indicated that human error at the start of the walk had caused the hatch problem. Anatoly Solovyov, 42, and Alexander Balandin, 36, also removed the handrails they had affixed to the outside of their Soyuz TM-9 spacecraft during a July 17 excursion to repair torn insulation on the outside of the ship. Those handrails could have posed a problem when the capsule separated from the Mir space station for the cosmonauts’ voyage home.