Alex Bowles was standing on a beach in Fiji as the Mir Space Station streaked to its final resting place in the South Pacific.

According to Russian Mission Control, at 12:55 a.m. EST (05:55 GMT, 8:55 a.m. Moscow time), the station was 50 km (31 mi) above the Earth's surface. Less than a minute later, it had fallen to 39 km (24 mi). At 12:58 a.m. EST (05:58 GMT, 8:55 a.m. Moscow time) fragments of the station hit the ocean.

"We did see the Mir come across the sky," continued Bowles, Project Coordinator for MirReentry.com in a telephone interview with SPACE.com. "It was a stunning blue steak followed by a sonic boom. The pieces had a blue incandescence to them."

Mir burns up in the skies above Nadi, Fiji

As Bowles stood on the beach with approximately 50 other spectators, SPACE.com's Contributing Correspondant Yuri Karash was aboard an aircraft circling the reentry path.

"It was a big flare in the sky. The aircraft was banking as we saw it. No one has ever seen a huge complex shape break up like this from Earth. So we don't know what to compare it to."

Meanwhile, directors at Mission Control announced over a speaker system the following:

"Orbital Space Station Mir has completed its triumphant flight, which has been unprecedented in the history of manned space exploration and which humankind has yet to fully appreciate."