The Russian space station Mir descended 1.8 kilometers (a little more than 1 mile) on Saturday, the press service for mission control outside Moscow has told Interfax. The space station was orbiting at an altitude of 247.7 kilometers (154 miles) on Sunday, while experts had earlier expected it to be 400 kilometers (249 miles) above the Earth on this date.
At the beginning of February the rate of descent was slower--500 meters a day. Mir has thereby passed through the threshold altitude of 250 kilometers, which experts had set as critical for the beginning of the active phase of sinking the station safely in the Pacific.
Also on Sunday, Natalya Novikova, head of a laboratory at Russia's Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, told Interfax that the sinking of Mir would not cause a microbiological disaster on Earth.
The conclusion is based on studies of the micro-organisms that flourished on during the station's 15 year history, Novikova told Interfax. She said that micro-organism samples and station components damaged by bacteria and microscopic fungus have been brought back to earth for investigation more than once.
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