Mir and its crews survived two of the most dangerous situations that can happen in space: a fire and a hull breach. Ironically, both emergencies occurred with American astronauts aboard. Here are some of the highlights and dark clouds on Mirs biography:

• March 13, 1986 First crew is launched on a 125-day mission. Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov made an unprecedented flyover to the Russian station Salyut 7 to complete work on the outpost, then return to Mir.
• Feb. 5, 1987 Launch of cosmonauts that begins long-term habitation of Mir by successive crews.
• July 30, 1987 Flight engineer Alexander Leveykin returns to Earth because of heart problems.
• Dec. 21 1987 Dec. 21, 1988 -- Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov make one-year-long flight on Mir, setting a space endurance record.
• April 27, 1989 Short of funds, Russian space officials tell the crew to leave Mir unstaffed. It remains vacant until Sept. 8, 1989. Since then, Mir has been permanently occupied.
• February 1990 Space-walking cosmonauts test a self-propulsion system outside Mir. After two trials with the cosmonauts remaining tethered, it is put away and never used again.
• July 1990 -- Cosmonauts conduct a spacewalk to repair the Soyuz spaceship that will take them home. In the process, they damage the hatch of the Kvant-2 module, which is repaired by future crews.
• March 1991 Remotely piloted cargo vessel flies by the station and almost collides with it due to the loss of a rendezvous antenna. The crew quickly switches docking ports. They later replace the antenna during a spacewalk.
• May 1991 Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev learns that he has to give up his ride home to a fare-paying passenger and stay aboard Mir for a double mission. He returns to Earth in March 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
• February 1993 -- Crew successfully tests first "space mirror" by remote control. The structure is mounted on a cargo ship.
• September 1994 -- Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko manually controls the docking of an unpiloted cargo ship after two failed automatic docking attempts. The ship bumps into Mirs docking port during the second attempt.
• February 1995 The shuttle Atlantis makes a close approach to Mir to test rendezvous procedures for the first joint U.S.-Russian spaceflight since Skylab.
• March 16, 1995 NASA astronaut Norman Thagard begins a 3 1/2-month mission on Mir. He is the first of seven Americans to live on Mir.
• June 29, 1995 The U.S. space shuttle docks for the first time at the Russian outpost to pick up Thagard and his Russian crewmates and deliver food, supplies and the next Mir crew.
• March 24, 1996 Shannon Lucid is ferried to Mir to begin more than two years of a continuous U.S. presence in space. Her flight home is delayed by technical problems and she spends an extra two months in orbit, setting a new endurance record for U.S. spaceflights and a world endurance record for women.
• Feb. 24, 1997 An oxygen canister bursts into flames, cutting off the route to the stations emergency escape vehicles. Six men are aboard, including U.S, astronaut Jerry Linenger.
• March 1997 A test of a manual docking system is aborted when the TV fails. An orbital collision is narrowly averted.
• April 1997 The crew spends hours every day trying to hunt leaks in Mirs cooling system and repair oxygen generators and other equipment.
• April 29, 1997 -- First Russian - American spacewalk from Mir.
• June 25, 1997 During a practice of a new docking technique, Mir commander Vasily Tsibliyev loses control of an unpiloted cargo ship and it plows into the station. The Spektr module is punctured, The crew hurriedly seals off the compartment to save the ship. The next crew later makes a spacewalk inside the depressurized module to try to assess the damage.
• June 1998 NASA flies its last shuttle mission to Mir, delivering equipment and supplies and bringing home astronaut Andrew Thomas.
• August 1998 -- Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev launched to Mir for a stay of more than one year.
• Aug. 27, 1999 -- Cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev, Sergei Avdeyev and Jean-Pierre Haignere leave Mir. The station is unoccupied for the first time in almost a decade.