Cosmonauts cracked jokes to welcome newcomers and entertain themselves. Some pranksters went further, knocking on the station's window to loosen space dust clinging to its outside surface. When sunlight brightly illuminated these dust particles, and with no background to judge their size, some newcomers were tricked into believing that these were nothing less than UFOs drifting by.

[uplink]

But Mir veterans didn't reserve their tricks for crewmates. Sergei Krikalev managed to fool a truck driver on a highway in South Africa as he flew hundreds of miles (kilometers) overhead back in 1992.

After sneaking an amateur radio aboard Mir, Krikalev managed to establish a link with the truck driver who was heading to Kimberly.

The unsuspecting driver thought the man on the other end was one of his colleagues driving on a nearby road and called Krikalev a prankster when he said he was heading for America -- via India and China.

Despite Krikalev's efforts to explain that he was actually talking from high above, the South African refused to believe the Russian cosmonaut and rogered a sarcastic "See you in Kapstadt" before switching off.

When their own alcohol reserves ran out, some Mir inhabitants would explore their station for more, removing interior panels during their "treasure-seeking" expeditions, according to Alexander Poleshchuk who spent six months onboard Mir in 1993.

"Sometimes we would bump into a bottle of cognac. What a joy it was," Poleshchuk said in a recent interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Unlike cosmonauts, who go as far as urinate on a back tire of a bus that takes them to the launch pad, those who command them from the Mission Control Center in Korolyov prefer to remain "serious" and "concentrated."

"No, we don't do anything like that on our control panels," Viktor Blagov, Mir's deputy control chief, said, laughing.