The only visible remainder of the Russian empire's industrial and technological prowess has sped beyond the Mir Mission Control Center's sight and control, and is now expected to crash into the south Pacific around 1:30 a.m. EST.The Progress cargo ship's engines have just begun their third and final burn, igniting at 12:07 a.m. EST (05:07 GMT; 8:07 a.m. Moscow time) for a scheduled 22-minute, 15-second burn designed to slow Mir for a fiery reentry that MCC hopes will begin at 12:44 a.m. EST (05:44 GMT; 08:44 a.m. Moscow time), when the station hits the altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers).
For better or worse, no ground facility will be able to "see" the station in its final 40 minutes of life, MCC chief Vladimir Lobachev told reporters in Korolyov.
He said even the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll facility on the Marshall Islands, which is slated to be the last ground facility to track the fall of Mir, has a radar "vision" limited to objects on the horizon level and will be out of range of the 15-year-old station's terminal splashdown.
If they are lucky, only passengers of a plane chartered by Mirreentry.com will be in a position to observe the last moments of Mir's life, he said. The station will start disintegrating at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), and most of it will be destroyed during the reentry, according to MCC officials.
But up to 1,500 fragments weighing a total of some 13 to 19 tons will survive the burning dash through Earth's atmosphere and hit the surface at around 1:30 a.m. EST (06:30 GMT; 09:30 a.m. Moscow time), hopefully within the designated splashdown area, an ellipse some 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) long and 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide, about a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) from Australia.
The speed of destruction
Mir will still be flying at a speed of 17,895 miles per hour (8 kilometers per second) when it starts to disintegrate, an Energia official said.
While friction will slow the debris down, compact, heavy fragments will streak to Earth at a speed of 670 miles per hour (0.3 to 0.4 kilometers per second), he said in a recent phone interview -- a velocity reportedly sufficient to drive some fragments through 6.5 feet (2 meters) of concrete.
People in those countries who may see a shower of debris if Mir spins off from the designated zone have already taken precautionary measures. Authorities in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, for instance, have drawn up contingency plans and are taking pains to monitor the station in an effort to calculate exactly where the debris will land.
Even though Russian officials have maintained that Mir will go down safely, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) has taken out a $200 million insurance policy against third-party liabilities that could be caused by the fall of the $1.5 billion station.
Minute of silence
But while Australians are nervous, Russians are already grieving. The Moscow-based Mir Support Foundation has called upon Russians to observe a minute of silence at 10 a.m. local time (2 a.m. EST; 07:00 GMT) to mourn their fallen space station.
The foundation has already appealed to Moscow's leading radio stations to observe this minute of silence while calling on drivers across the nation to honk to commemorate the death of Russia's sovereign space exploration program.
9:25 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Second Deorbit Burn Completed
Mir came another step closer its death as engines of the Progress cargo ship fired for the second time tonight, continuing the sequence of three engine burns that will bring the geriatric station down into Earth's atmosphere and into the south Pacific Ocean in the early hours of March 23 EST. The engines of the Progress spacecraft, launched back in January for the grave mission of closing a chapter in the 40-year history of Soviet, then Russian human space exploration, began the second of the planned three deorbiting burns at 9:01 a.m. EST (March 23 at 14:01 GMT; 5:01 a.m. Moscow time). The 22-minute burn lowered the aged outpost's orbit to one with a high point of 135.78 miles (218.51 kilometers) and a low point of 98.77 miles (158.95 kilometers), according to officials of the Mission Control Center in Korolyov.
Now the station has only one command left to obey before it begins the final stage of what hopefully will be a safe reentry far away from populated areas including Australia, New Zealand and other countries located below the station's final path.
The last of the trio of braking impulses is set to begin shortly after midnight (12:07 a.m. EST; 05:07 GMT; 8:07 a.m. Moscow time). This final firing will bring the station down before it can make another orbit around the planet. As Mir plunges into the thicker part of Earth's atmosphere, the heat and friction will first tear away the station's solar panels and cause the station's fuel tanks to explode.
Then, Mir's hermetically sealed modules will splinter, ripped from each other to fall away in separate fragments as the station plunges deeper into the atmosphere. Most of these fragments will burn up before hitting the water, Mission Control head Valeri Blagov said, but some parts, like the ball-shaped, heat-resistant gas tanks, parts of the station's engines and some of its gyrodines will probably survive the fiery plunge and smash into the ocean.
Up to 1,500 fragments weighing a total of some 13 to 19 tons will survive the planned burning dash through Earth's atmosphere and hit the surface at around 1:30 a.m. EST (6:30 a.m. GMT; 9:30 a.m. Moscow time) within the ordained splashdown area -- an ellipse some 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) long and 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide, about a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) from Australia.
There is still a 2-percent chance that Mir will spin out of control during deorbiting, according to the Korolev center's chief ballistics expert, Nikolai Ivanov. Theoretically, the station can go into an uncontrolled dive anywhere between 52 degrees north and 52 degrees south latitude, Ivanov said -- a zone that is home to five out of six of Earth's inhabitants.
8:09 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
First Deorbit Burn Completed
The engines of the Progress cargo ship fired to give the Mir space station the first of the three deorbiting impulses that will send the aged outpost plunging into the Pacific Ocean.Obeying commands uploaded into the ship's control system by Mission Control Center (MCC) in Korolyov earlier today, the engines fired at 7:31.59 p.m. EST (March 23 at 00:31:59 GMT; 3:31:59 a.m. Moscow time) against the station's direction of flight. They slowed Mir from its cruising speed of about 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second, which lowered its altitude.
The burn, which lasted 1,244 seconds, lowered the station's orbit to one with an apogee of 135 miles (218 kilometers) and a perigee of (187 kilometers), according to MCC officials.
The deorbiting shift, dressed in gray and black suits, remained glued to their Soviet-era displays as a large screen projected the final countdown for what has been the primary workload of this center for the past 15 years.
Time to move on
The shift's controller and chief of the center, Vladimir Lobachev -- who shuttled back and forth between his study and the Mir control hall -- seemed emotionless and concentrated as a male voice flatly listed the planned procedures through loudspeakers.
Only when bugged by journalists would Lobachev admit that he "feels sad" to see the station that took "quite a part of our lives" go.
"However, life goes on," he said before running away to monitor the burn. "We now have the International Space Station."
Yuri Koptev, director general of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviacosmos) also said it was "time to move on."
Koptev told reporters less than an hour after the first burn had been successfully completed that the station has become so accident prone that "it wouldn't have been worth it to keep it in orbit only to be busy with fixing breakdowns."
Second brake
The flight control system of the Progress, which was docked to Mir in January, will order the second burn around 9:00 p.m. EST (March 23 at 02:00 GMT; 5:00 a.m. Moscow time), which should lower the orbit of the 15-year-old station to an apogee of 134 miles (215 kilometers) and a perigee of 99 miles (159 kilometers). This burn will last 22 minutes 8 seconds, according to officials.
The third and final impulse is scheduled to begin at after midnight at 12:07 a.m. EST (05:07 GMT; 8:07.36 a.m. Moscow time) and last some 22 minutes 15 seconds. Upon completion of this impulse, the station will begin its fiery plunge with burning debris expected to hit in a designated area of the Pacific Ocean at 1:30 a.m. EST (06:30 GMT; 8:30 a.m. Moscow time).
None of these deorbiting impulses could have been executed if MCC had failed to stabilize the 134-ton station on March 22 by firing Mir's own stabilization thrusters.
Obeying commands uploaded by MCC in the early hours of March 22, Mir's main computer fired off the station's engines to stabilize the station and orient it so that engines of the Progress could fire against the direction of the station's flight.
7:05 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Mir Deorbit By the Numbers
Experts disagree on exactly when everything will happen during the final hour of Mir's life, but there's little doubt about the sequence of events -- realities enforced by the laws of physics. The final hour will begin with the attached Progress freighter's last firing of its braking rocket, an event now expected about 12:30 a.m. EST (05:30 GMT) Friday. When that burn is completed 23 minutes later the space station's speed will be slowed enough that it will definitely fall of out orbit.
For the first few minutes Mir will continue to fly at more than 17,500 mph, losing altitude with each passing second.
According to NASA, the Earth's atmosphere begins at about 400,000 feet the point where the air molecules become dense enough to have an impact on an object or vessel, like the space shuttle as it approaches the earth.
Starting at this point the 135-ton Mir will begin to contend with two destructive effects of reentry: heat and pressure.
Friction from flying through the air at more than five miles per second will heat up the station's exterior, with some parts reaching more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. It's titanium metal skin, carbon fiber from its heat shields, as well as the glass in its solar panels will begin to melt, erode, then break and pull away from the station.
The electricity-generating solar wings, the communications antennae, handrails and other small items will quickly fall prey to the heat.
As it hurtles earthward, Mir's spindly structure will weaken and the station's six main modules will be torn asunder, become independently flying objects.
Between the burning metal and the increased density of the air, any pressurized tanks that made it this far will mot likely rupture, possible leading to explosions. There is also the possibility that any remaining thruster propellant in Mir's tank or the Progress freighter may rupture adding the fireworks.
Now, mere minutes from impact, the station's speed -- or that of its fragments -- will be a lot slower than its initial orbiting speed.
"We believe that that the pieces of Mir will hit the water with speeds ranging from 125 miles per hour to about 600 miles per hour," said John Carrico, Senior Astrodynamics Specialist at Analytical Graphics, Inc. in Malvern PA.
Carrico and his colleagues ran the computer simulations of the re-entry based on publicly available information from the Internet and came up with some interesting numbers.
According to the projections, a five-pound piece of Mir made of titanium and about the size of a softball would hit the water about 125 mph, while a Volkswagen Bug-sized piece weighing about 2,200 pounds would strike at about 325 mph.
In less than an hour, the Mir space station that survived more then 15 years in space, will pass into history.
4:25 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Cosmic Dancer Sculptor Keeps Mir Vigil
When Russia's Mir space station plunges into oblivion in the South Pacific on Friday, it will take with it a geometric sculpture made by a Swiss-American "space artist." Or will it? The aluminum artwork, entitled "Cosmic Dancer," was made in 1993 by U.S.-born sculptor and painter Arthur Woods, who convinced Russian space authorities to put it aboard the craft.
Most of the people aware of the sculpture's existence figured it had been left aboard the space station and would share its fate -- melting down into a lump of metal before crashing into the sea.
However, Woods is not sure that his labor of love is still aboard the craft.
"It is not clear to me if my sculpture is still on the Mir," he told SPACE.com. "I lost track of it a few years back and it was too expensive for me to organize a search or to return it via the Russians."
Russian authorities have assured Woods that the one-kg [2.2 pound] work has not left Mir, but he has not spotted it on any recent film from inside the doomed spacecraft.
Woods, a longtime advocate of the artistic potential of space environments, is philosophical about the sculpture's fate.
"As far as my sculpture is concerned, when I sent it to space it was meant to stay in space and not meant to come back," he told Reuters. "So if it comes down with Mir, if that's what happens to it, then that's appropriate.
"It's becoming a star."
Meanwhile, as it turns out, the sculpture actually belongs to the United States.
"I donated the Cosmic Dancer to the Air and Space Museum, which accepted the donation," he told SPACE.com. "But when asked, NASA would not bring it back to Earth."
2:25 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Mir Will Disappear From World Radars During Final Minutes
Mir will disappear from all global radars 40 minutes before its splashdown, according to Russian mission control director Vladimir Lobachev, in an interview with Interfax. During this period however, "Mir should descend to the splashdown area and experts hope that everything will go as planned." "After the engines are switched off at a height of 158 kilometers we will not be able to observe Mir for 40 minutes, because it will not come up on our radars. America's mission control in Houston will not be able to see it either and nor will the European Space Agency," Lobachev said.
"The Americans have a radar on the Fiji Islands, but its visibility zone is just 2 degrees and it can only spot objects that follow almost along the horizontal. So nobody will see Mir's last minutes."
"Possibly tourists on commercial flights will get lucky, but this is unlikely because the area where it will splashdown is too large," he noted.
After the engines are switched off, mission control will give a last forecast of where the pieces of the station will fall and inform all states through their embassies in Russia.
"There will be 61 representatives from different embassies at mission control, who plan to observe the process and immediately warn their states if there are any changes from previous forecasts," Lobachev said.
1:25 p.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
No Mir Souvenirs to Collect, Bacteria Threat Dismissed
If the deorbiting and splashdown of the Mir space station take place according to plan, souvenir collectors and foreign intelligence services will be unable to collect its unburned fragments, Vadim Pelevin of the Russian Institute of Oceanology told Interfax on Thursday. "There are no islands where such souvenirs could be collected in the elliptical 6,000-by-200-kilometer sinking zone with the center at 44.2 degrees southern latitude and 150.4 degree western longitude, and the Pacific Ocean there is three to five kilometers deep," Pelevin said.
"There is only one deep-sea diving craft in the world capable of descending to such a depth - the other Russian Mir carried by the Akademik Keldysh scientific ship that was used for examining the sunken submarines Kursk and Komsomolets and for filming the Titanic," he said. However, the craft will hardly be used because the Akademik Keldysh is now in the Atlantic and does not plan to follow the sinking of the space station.
Pelevin dismissed as absolutely unscientific the media assumptions about the survival of certain bacterial mutants that allegedly exist aboard Mir and that may not burn in the atmosphere but may start multiplying in the ocean causing unpredictable consequences on earth.
"Firstly, no dangerous microorganisms have ever been discovered on the station; secondly, if they do exit, they will inevitably perish on the station entering the atmosphere, because even metal, to say nothing of living organisms, cannot stand the heat accompanying the process," Pelevin said.
"So Mir's fall into the ocean will not harm the environment," he stressed.
11:35 a.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
U.S. Disaster Agency on Call
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said today it is ready in the event that Mir should careen into the U.S. or land atop American interests in the Pacific Ocean. "If it lands somewhere in the United States and causes some sort of catastrophic problem, then FEMA would be involved in the 'consequence management' of that," Holly Harrington, FEMA spokeswoman told SPACE.com.
In a national situation update issued by FEMA this morning, the agency said that most of MIR is expected to burn up in the atmosphere. "However, some pieces will impact on the ocean surface, creating an effect similar to the crash landing of one or two small aircraft," the statement said.
The FEMA statement explains that, if problems arise, the U.S. Space Command who is tracking Mir, will notify the disaster response organization through established links and FEMA, in turn, will notify U.S. interests in the western Pacific Ocean.
10:45 a.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Japan Prepares as Mir Enters Into Final Orbits
Debris from the abandoned Mir space station could hit Okinawa Prefecture should any problems arise during its descent into Pacific waters on Friday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Thursday. Scraps from the spacecraft could either fly over or fall on Okinawa's Sakishima islands in southwestern Japan between 3:50 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. local time if problems occur during the last of the station's three engine firings aimed at bringing it down, Fukuda said at a news conference.
Although it is highly likely that debris from Mir will plunge safely into the sea, people living in the area are advised to stay indoors, Fukuda said. Mir is expected to fly through Japanese air space about 150 to 170 kilometers above Earth at around 2:30 p.m. Friday, before plunging into the south Pacific between 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m, Fukuda said.
Japan's Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology made the analysis based on information on Mir's flight path supplied by Russia.
The Mir space station will pass into the dense layers of Earth's atmosphere and start breaking into pieces at approximately 8:52 a.m. Moscow time on March 23.
The station's altitude dropped by almost 2 miles (3.4 km) between Wednesday and Thursday midnight Moscow time.
Those pieces of the station that do not burn up will splash into a stretch of Pacific Ocean between Australia and South America by 9:30 a.m., sources at the mission control center in Korolyov have told Interfax.
"Everything is going according to plan, the station's onboard systems, according to an analysis of telemetric data, are working," mission control said.
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology has said the chance of debris from Mir hitting Japan and causing damage is only one in 100 million. Government officials in charge of crisis management will gather at the prime minister's official residence and be on alert from Friday morning to Mir's plunge into the ocean in the afternoon, Fukuda said.
There are no islands or navigation routes in the zone. It is also an area traditionally used by Russia and other countries for dumping unwanted spacecraft.
9:15 a.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Fisherman Tempt Fate in South Pacific
WASHINGTON - A small armada of albacore fishing boats are in the splashdown zone for the Mir space station. Over two dozen albacore tuna vessels are some ten days from land and reportedly unable to escape before the huge Russian complex nosedives into South Pacific waters. According to the Western Fishboat Owners Association (WFOA), a number of fishing boats are inside the Mir crash area, a large swath of remote waters between New Zealand and South America.
WFOA officials said that due to the remote location of the fleet, the boat owners couldn't escape the Mir zone in time even if they were in a position to do so.
New Zealand's Maritime Safety Authority has issued a warning to the ships, urging them to vacate the area.
According to a message from one boat owner, Captain Stan Davis of the Nightwind, current conditions at sea are such that "it would be like trying to crawl our of the way of an oncoming truck."
In a communiqu from "ground zero", Davis said he wasn't sure if was fortunate to be witness to 1,500 hot molten metal pieces falling from the sky. "That could easily sink our boats or explode our empty fuel tanks," Davis said.
Davis took issue with statements depicting the crash site as remote and desolate. "I guess our 34 boats and 200 souls don't count," he said.
"We believed that making 100-day trips thousands of miles from any port while dodging tropical cyclones and roaring forty lows were adversity enough.but we apparently needed falling space junk to add a little spice to our existence," Davis said.
8:25 a.m. EST Thursday, March 22:
Mir orbit adjusted, emergency teams report response time
Russian mission control has altered the Mir space station's orbit to allow for maximum charging of the station's batteries. The outpost will continue to fly in this orientation until the tonight's first deorbit burn. Although everything is now proceeding as planned, if Mir were to go awry, the Associated Press reports "Australian and New Zealand emergency officials will have no more than 90 minutes to respond."
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