Solovyov, who was the first to board Mir with Leonid Kizim in March 1986 and stayed there for 125 days, making it habitable for new crews, is always present in the control room when important work is being done on the station, a mission control official told Interfax on Tuesday.

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There is no special red button that will trigger the station's descent, the official said. "The station's computer does everything on commands sent by the controllers. In effect, nobody will hold oneself personally responsible for sharing in this doleful, but necessary job."

The shift present at mission control in the wee hours of March 23 will send the last sinking commands to the computer. Before that, the station will have taken a proper attitude that the control center will maintain.

Mir's engines will send the first braking pulse at 3:33 a.m. Moscow time. A second pulse will follow during the next orbit at 5:02 a.m. During the following two orbits, mission control personnel will measure the path of the station, determine the atmospheric conditions and analyze the telemetry data. If any of the variables causes fear that the station will behave erratically, the last braking pulse will be delayed to enable the personnel to choose the safest way to bring the station down.

If everything proceeds smoothly, the personnel at 8:02 a.m. will send a program to the Mir computer that will switch on the main engine of the Progress M1 cargo spacecraft and the station's attitude control engines will trigger the last braking pulse.

The station will enter the Earth's dense atmosphere and begin to break up. The debris from Mir is expected to fall in a planned part of the Pacific Ocean at 9:30 a.m. Moscow time.