In the fall of 2000 the Russians announced the probable deorbit of the Mir space station sometime during the early months of 2001.

The first Russian estimate was that they planned to deorbit Mir on January 26 or 27 2001. Since I had been planning to observe the Mir reentry for many years, I immediately put my plan into action.

In early January, the Russians announced that they would deorbit Mir in early March 2001. I also obtained orbital data that indicated that the most significant reentry phenomena could only be observed from a location that was much farther south and east of my original plan. The new observation location was so far east of New Zealand that there were no local aircraft.

I cancelled the Auckland aircraft charter and began to search for alternative solutions. I was able to obtain a charter of an A340 aircraft out of Tahiti and for the next three weeks we were planning to charter the A340 for our Mir Reentry Observation Expedition. While we had to start from scratch organizing the expedition from a new south Pacific staging area, we believed at the time that Tahiti would be the best place to fly from to observe the "breakup" of the Mir reentry event. We booked hotels and ground logistic support and told our Russian friends of our change of plans so they could obtain visas for our new staging area, Tahiti.

By late February it became clear that the Russians were going to plan to delay the deorbit of Mir. Their reasoning was simple. Instead of bringing Mir down from a 155-mile (250-kilometer) orbit, they decided to wait until the station's orbit decayed down to 140 miles (225 kilometers).

That would do two things. First, it would buy them a couple of extra weeks to perfect their deorbit procedures. Second, the Mir reentry from the lower altitude would give further assurance that the final deorbit burns would, in fact, take the station down so that it would land in the primary target "splash" area.

In early March the Russians also told us to stage our expedition from Fiji rather than Tahiti because they felt that regardless of what kind of orbital situation they would eventually use, Fiji was a much better staging area than Tahiti. During the first week of March, we changed the expedition staging area for the second time from Tahiti to Fiji. We released our A340 charter aircraft and began to search for suitable charter aircraft from Fiji.

[uplink]

Our Russian friends were pleased that we were moving our expedition staging area from Tahiti to Fiji because that did not require Tahiti visas, which are difficult to obtain at the last minute. Within a few days we had put deposits on two turboprop aircraft that would fly out of Fiji and we made reservations for air ticket to Fiji and hotels at Nadi, Fiji, our new expedition staging area.

Along with the data on the revised orbit, our Russian friends provided us with new coordinates for what they believed would be the major breakup of the Mir space station as it passed through the Earths atmosphere. The exact location was somewhere between Fiji and New Caledonia, depending on the orbit and the date they planned to bring Mir down. We developed a primary observation plan and two backup plans. The primary observation plan was to have both aircraft fly to a location that was approximately 310 miles (500 kilometers) beyond Tonga, refueling in Tonga to extend our range to the reentry observation location.

As the Russians continued to delay the Mir deorbit date, first from March 6 to March 8, later from March 8 to March 10, and still later from March 12 to March 14, we had to struggle with changing orbits and changing reentry observation locations.

Each day of delay meant a series of changes. First, the observation location changed. Second, the observation light conditions changed. Third, our observation flight plans would change with each change of date. And the flight plans were critical if we were to observe the "rupture" of the Mir station.

By the beginning of the second week of March, when it became reasonably clear that the Mir deorbit date would be delayed once again to perhaps March 16 to March 18, we began to make more definite plans to mobilize our expedition to insure that we did not miss the reentry event. We also knew that the deorbit date could not be delayed for many more days because, at the current rate of descent, Mir would reenter the Earths atmosphere uncontrolled sometime in late March.

We locked in our two charter aircraft, which, based on our most up-to-date flight plans, could locate to the optimum reentry observation location. During the second week of March we obtained detailed reentry orbit plans and a reasonably accurate reentry flight profile. We continued to receive updated reentry procedures and reentry flight data from Moscow on a daily basis. Because the Russians had decided to wait until Mir reached a lower altitude, we knew that it would have a much shallower flight profile than had previously been estimated.

Toward the end of the second week of March, we received data from Moscow that indicated that Mir would enter Earths atmosphere just south of the equator and would reach an altitude of about 55 miles (90 kilometers) at a latitude of about 20 degrees. The flattened flight profile meant that we needed to have our aircraft much farther south than previously thought.

The Russian exerts believed that a major part of the complex's breakup would occur at an altitude somewhere between 45 miles (75 kilometers) and 55 miles (85 kilometers). That would mean that we would have to travel between 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) and 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) southeast of Fiji to observe what the experts thought would be the most spectacular part of the reentry event. These distances were beyond the range of our two chartered turboprop aircraft.

By the end of the second week of March the Russians delayed the Mir deorbit date again. On March 14, they delayed the deorbit date to March 20 and on March 16 they changed it to March 22. These delays have caused changes in our flight plans and our reentry observation location.