With the deorbiting of the Mir Space Station, the future of Russia's space program has been the subject of great debate: Has Russia become a second-tier space power behind the United States? What role will Russia play in the International Space Station? Could or should Russia build Mir 2?
As both Russia and the U.S. redefine their roles in a post-Mir, post-ISS budget cuts world, engineers in Russia have unveiled the plans for a Russian space station that could conceivably replace Mir.
However, according to Mikhail Synelshchikov, Chief of Human Space Flight Directorate of Rosaviakosmos, plans to build the station are currently "not on the agenda."
"Work on the next generation manned spacecraft, including space stations, is in progress, but most likely none of such projects will be realized until the ISS is completed," Synelshchikov told SPACE.com.
"Mir 2 is a product of the evolutionary development of Salyut- and Mir-type stations concept," said Leonid Gorshkov, one of the leading designers of RSC Energia, in his exclusive interview with SPACE.com. "Each proceeding station was a result of a thorough analysis of the previous stations design and operation. We tried to make each descendent free of the flaws and deficiencies of its predecessor."
And although Mir proved to be a very robust machine, setting the record for manned spacecraft longevity in space, Gorshkov admits that by the time of its deorbit it was no longer a state of the art spacecaft.
"Mir had a number of flaws," Gorshkov said. "The first and the biggest flaw being that Mir was short on power despite the fact that almost all the surfaces of its modules were covered by solar arrays. These arrays, however, were placed too close to the station and they had only two degrees of freedom, meaning that they often overshadowed each other."
Mir 2's designers have taken that into consideration and designed Mir 2's solar arrays so that they are further away from the body of the new station, giving the arrays more sun orientation capacity.
Other key elements of Mir, particularly motion and orientation control systems, were upgraded in Mir 2 design as well.
"We were not satisfied with the orbital inclination of Mir either," said Gorshkov. "51.6 inclination did not enable the outpost to cover most of the Russian territory. The new space station was supposed to be launched at 65 inclination."
According to Gorshkov, many of Mir 2's ideas were incorporated into the Russian segments of the ISS. If Mir 2 is ever created its design and operation would be based on both Mir and ISS experience.
Synelshchikov said that while building Mir 2 was not in the immediate future, he would not exclude the possibility of Russia developing and building other advanced human spacecraft.
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