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	Mir space station to be brought down to Earth in February posted: 02:33 pm ET 17 November 2000

Mir space station to be brought down to Earth in February Story first posted at 8:37 a.m., November 16, 2000

The Russian space station Mir will be crashed into the Pacific Ocean on February 27 or 28, the general director of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos) said Thursday.

A Mir Chronology

Heralding what would become an exciting era in space exploration, on February 20, 1986 the Soviet Union announced the launch of its new space station called Mir.

The station will be brought out of orbit and back to Earth over the Pacific Ocean 900 to 1,250 miles (1,500 to 2,000 kilometers) from Australia, Yuri Koptev said at a news conference, according to the Interfax News Service.

"Right now we are at such a stage in the operation of Mir that any of its systems could well fail at any time," Koptev said.

Also, Dennis Tito, the American who planned to be the world's first space tourist and began preparations for the trip at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, is very unlikely to ever visit Mir, Koptev said.

Tito's trip was arranged through Netherlands-based MirCorp, which leased time on the station and wanted to use it for commercial purposes.

MirCorp refused to comment until the Russian government issues a decree regarding the deorbiting of Mir. That official word will come in the next two weeks, said MirCorp staffer Kristen Oland.

But Rick Tumlinson, who was instrumental in starting MirCorp, and even traveled to Russia to sign documents to create the company, said Mir's demise has NASA's name on it.

"This is [Yuri] Koptev, employed by NASA to mug MirCorp," said Tumlinson, president of the Space Frontier Foundation. "We're seeing commercial facilities being bulldozed to make way for the ISS. NASA's been working for more than a year behind the scenes to try to kill MirCorp."

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Koptev briefed the Russian Cabinet on the space agency's plan for closing down Mir. The Cabinet supported the plan overall, Koptev said. In January, another cargo ship will be sent up to Mir to begin shutting down the station and prepare it for deorbiting, he said.

A Progress cargo ship has already been sent to Mir to maintain its orbit and prevent it from falling out of orbit in December, he said.

The day before the government session, Koptev told Interfax that the Foreign Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, Defense Ministry and other agencies are expected to submit to the Russian government a package of documents regulating the way Mir's operations will end and how it will be safely taken out of orbit.

In accordance with international agreements, Russia is responsible to foreign countries for the safety of its research in space, Koptev said, particularly when it comes to safely taking old space vehicles out of orbit.

Koptev's colleague Anatoly Kiselyov, general director of the Khrunichev State Space Research Center, had told Interfax earlier that it is practically impossible to give a 100-percent guarantee that Mir will come down in the predetermined region of the Pacific Ocean and nowhere else.

"When a multi-module orbital complex weighing 130 tons and having enormous surface area brakes, enters the dense atmosphere, passes through the atmosphere and falls into the ocean, it is practically impossible to make a highly precise mathematical model for this process," he said.

At the same time, specialists have a very good idea about what elements of Mir will not burn up in the atmosphere and fall to Earth. These elements are fragments of the large main frames of the Mir's main module, of the Kvant, Kristall, Spektr and Priroda modules, as well as the rocket engines.

Experts have determined a fairly vast area where the station's elements will fall -- an area some 5,000 to 6,000 miles (8,000 to 10,000 kilometers) long and 125 miles (200 kilometers) wide, the head of the Khrunichev Center said. However, some fragments of Mir could also come down over land. According to experts' calculations, the probability of this is not very high, but does exist.

For now, Mir is under control, the Russian experts say. Having orbited Earth for more than 14 years, Mir has exceeded its initially planned life span by almost five times. Mir has hosted 28 long expeditions and another 16 lasting from one to four weeks. Fifteen of the long missions were international, including participants from Syria, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, France, Japan, Great Britain, Austria, Germany, the European Space Agency and Slovakia.

In addition, there have been nine expeditions involving U.S. space shuttles. During these expeditions, 37 American astronauts visited the station. In summer 1997, an emergency occurred that had a considerable impact on Mir's fate. While docking with the Mir, a Progress cargo ship failed to respond to commands and rammed the Spektr scientific module.

As a result of this first collision between operating space objects, one of Mir's modules was punctured and leaked oxygen. The international crew (cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin, and NASA astronaut Michael Foale) aboard the station retreated to a docked Soyuz spacecraft to prepare for emergency evacuation.

However, the situation was brought under control; the punctured module's hatch was closed and the oxygen leak was stopped. For the next two years, Mir crews did extensive maintenance and brought the station back into full working order.