Russian Mission Control stopped receiving telemetry, or data transmissions from the space station Mir on Wednesday, according to a space industry source.

The station, however, still is receiving commands from Mission Control and appears to be responding as expected. The situation remains under control, the source said.

The current difficulty in communications may be the result of a failure in an information transmitter in Mir's base module or the result of a power drain following a recent performance of several operations that consumed a lot of on-station battery power.

Under the latter scenario, it is possible that the batteries were exhausted and could not provide the telemetric transmitter with enough energy to beam the necessary information to the ground. But that situation could be easily fixed just by reorienting the station to recharge its batteries and temporarily placing the outpost in a power-saving mode.

The over 14-year-old station is set to be deorbited in late February due to a lack of government funds, although backers continue to work on ways to keep the station operating. Still, Mir recently has continued to suffer and bounce back from breakdowns. A loss of contact with Mir earlier this week fed fears of an uncontrolled plunge to Earth, but Mission Control regained contact with the station Tuesday after 20 hours of silence.

On Sunday, December 31, leaders of the Russian space industry involved in Mir's operation, are set to meet and decide whether there is a need to send an "emergency crew" to the station.

Mir, currently flying about 200 miles (310 kilometers) above Earth, loses about 330 to 440 yards (300 to 400 meters) of orbital altitude each day.