After years of debate over what to do with the station, seen as the last major symbol of Soviet space glory, the government said last month the 140-ton station would be brought down into the Pacific Ocean 900 to 1,200 miles east of Australia on Feb. 27-28. Solovyov said two cosmonauts would be ready to blast off for the Mir and direct the descent should problems arise.

If Mir's descent weren't controlled, big fragments could survive a fiery plunge through the Earth's atmosphere and potentially wreak havoc on the ground. But even an uncontrolled drop would take at least three months because of the Mir's distance from the Earth, 350 kilometers (250 miles), officials said.

Mission Control lost contact with Mir on Monday morning, and flight controllers in Korolyov just north of Moscow worked around the clock in a frantic effort to get a signal from the station.

A collective sigh of relief was felt in the tense control room when controllers heard a weak signal from the station Tuesday afternoon.

During the next radio linkup, they activated reserve batteries and said the battle was won.

"First we breathed a half breath, and then took a full chest of air," Solovyov, his face pale and haggard from lack of sleep.

Solvovyov said the loss of radio contact occurred because Mir's batteries had suddenly lost most of their power -- an event he described as unprecedented. "It was one of the worst breakdowns in our history," he said.

Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the information received during the hookups showed that the station had normal cabin pressure and temperature, and its systems were working normally.

Recharging the batteries through the station's solar panels should take until Wednesday morning, Solovyov said. It would take few more days to analyze the data transmitted from the Mir to determine what caused the breakdown.

"We must leave a good memory of the station, not turn it into a weapon threatening all of mankind," Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev said on ORT television Tuesday night.

Observers long have been worried about the Mir's safety. However, after a terrifying fire and near-disastrous collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997 followed by a series of computer glitches and breakdowns, the Mir had been running relatively smoothly this year.

The Mir had only one, 73-day manned mission this year. Russian space officials decided in November it was necessary to dump the Mir since it had no funds to keep it aloft and also because experts could no longer guarantee the safety of its operation. Many considered the decision a blow to Russian pride.

Calling for careful preparation for the Mir's descent, space officials recalled a Soviet satellite that crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt, but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.

The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, spreading debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.

When Mir was launched on Feb. 20, 1986, it was the epitome of the Soviet technological edge, and it has far surpassed the three to five years it was expected to last. Critics have said it has outlived its usefulness and pointed to the potential dangers of keeping it aloft.

Mission Control usually contacts the space station several times a day. If ground controllers failed to re-establish regular contact with the Mir, its solar panels would eventually lose alignment with the sun, and the power shortage would freeze its systems. The station would also rotate chaotically, making it hard for any emergency crew to dock and try to regain control.

Officials have said Russia should concentrate its funds on the new international space station instead of the Mir _ something the U.S. space agency NASA has been urging for years. NASA is leading the 16-nation international project, which has suffered repeated delays because of funding problems for Russian modules.

NASA declined to comment on the latest Mir mishap.