Deorbit of Russia’s Mir Space Station was 10 Years Ago Today

The Soviet Union’s Mir Space Station was decommissioned and allowed to burn up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over Fiji 10 years ago today. The spectacular footage captured below illustrates the intense heat and high speed of the re-entry, which began at about 62 miles above the surface.

At the time, Mir was the largest object ever to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere in a controlled burn. No one knew whether the ship would burn up completely or survive in the form of large intact pieces which could hit houses in Japan or ships on the Pacific.  The chances of this happening were of course remote, but they were of enough concern that official s in Japan and the Fiji Islands advised residents to stay in doors for about 20 minutes while maritime officials redirected ships away from the re-entry point.

In fact, some chunks of the space station did survive the re-entry, falling into the waters of the Pacific. Salvage crews were able to recover a few of these pieces on the same day as the re-entry.

According to Wikipedia, after the construction of the International Space Station began in 1998, Russian resources were split between the two stations. Initially, the MirCorp agency was contracted to lease the station for commercial use including space tourism. However, the Russian government in 2000 became concerned that these missions would not receive adequate funding, and decided instead to decommission the craft.

Rather than wait until the ship became unstable, it was decided in November 2000 to deorbit the ship while it was still functioning. This enabled a controlled burn rather than the out-of-control drop of Skylab in 1979 and Salyut 7 some 10 years earlier in 1991.

Mir, which means “peace” or “world”, travelled in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. It was constructed from 1986 to 1996 with a modular design, and was the largest artificial satellite orbiting the Earth until its deorbit. Mir served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems in order to develop technologies required for the permanent occupation of space.

The station was the first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space and was operated by a series of long-duration crews. The Mir program held the record for the longest uninterrupted human presence in space, 3,644 days, and it still holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, of Valeri Polyakov at 437 days 18 hours. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years of its fifteen-year lifespan.

When complete, the station consisted of seven pressurised modules and several unpressurised components. Power was provided by several solar arrays mounted directly on the modules. The station was maintained at an orbit between 184 miles and 262 miles altitude and traveled at an average speed of 17,200 mph, completing 15.7 orbits per day.

The cost of the station was estimated by former General Director of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos Yuri Koptev in 2001 as $4.2 billion over its lifetime.