End of a legacy: MIR falls

Late Friday night, shortly after 0600 GMT, the 15-year legacy that was the Russian space station MIR came to an end. Over the past 15 years, the station has been the instrument of a number of space records and firsts. The station played host to 23,000 experiments, was manned by a total of 104 astronauts and cosmonauts, and made 86,320 successful orbits of the earth (about 2.2 billion miles). The station also helped set the record for longest human stay in space and longest manned craft in space. The aging station also survived the fall of the Soviet Union, as the cosmonauts looked on from orbit. But nothing lasts forever.

Over the past decade, the aging and obsolete station has been plagued with problems. In 1997, a fire caused by a sparking oxygen generator threatened the lives of the station and crew. Also in December, failing batteries pitched the station into isolation as the communication system failed for 20 days and disabled the main computer for several more. Several other incidents occurred over the years, including one where a cosmonaut had a head-on collision with a basketball-sized blob of liquid-coolant and suffered from toxic poisoning. Finally, the Russian space agency was left with no choice but to terminate the project.

Without sufficient funding to maintain the stations on-going mission, the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos was forced to finally order the retirement of MIR. In order to minimize the risks of reentry, Russian mission control selected an impact spot in the South Pacific at 44 degrees south, 150 degrees west, which is between Chile and New Zealand. The Russian space agency has used this general location many times over the years for several other controlled reentries.

A Progress supply ship left attached to MIR was used as a maneuvering system, firing its engines twice, at 0030 and at 0200 GMT, to slow the station and change its orbital pattern. Then, around 0500 GMT, the Progress rockets fired one last time and sent the station hurdling through the atmosphere and into the south pacific.

Most of the 143 ton station burned up in the atmosphere, but it has been estimated that as much as 28 tons of debris made it to earth and impacted with a velocity upwards of 1,000 feet per second which is fast enough to crash through a six foot thick block of concrete. People on the island of Fiji saw the fireballs from MIR's reentry as they soared overhead on its way to splash down. There are no reports of debris hitting land, and the Russian mission control is confident that they have conducted a flawless reentry procedure. When asked if they would attempt to recover the remaining wreckage, a spokesman for Russian Mission Control, Vsevolod Latyshev, responded by saying "For what?"