Now a space engineer, he holds the world record for accruing the longest total time spent in space -- 747 days, equal to just over two years, during three stints on Mir.
After trying for years to split its scarce resources between Mir and the new, 16-nation International Space Station project, Russia has grudgingly made its choice. The government said Mir, whose name is Russian for both "peace'' and "world,'' must be dumped due to its worsening condition and the lack of funds to keep it going. The craft will be brought down in the south Pacific Ocean this month, March 12 at the earliest.
It's a far cry from the Russians' heyday, when between 1957 and 1961 they lofted into space the first satellite (Sputnik), the first dog (Laika) and the first human (Yuri A. Gagarin).
A descent sequence begun in January will bring Mir to 155 miles (250 kilometers) above Earth, whereupon a cargo ship already docked with the station will fire its engines and give it a final push down.
Up to 27 tons of fragments of the 143-ton station are expected to rain on Earth after the reentry. Space officials have pledged to try to direct them to a remote stretch of sea about halfway between Australia and Chile.
However, Mir's patchy safety record has raised doubts about the ground controllers' ability to guide the station accurately.
"We don't have a 100-percent safety guarantee,'' said Yuri Semyonov, the head of the state-controlled RSC Energia company that built and has been running Mir.
Mir's core module was launched on Feb. 20, 1986. It has been upgraded with five additional segments during its flight and set a longevity record, far outliving its predecessors. Along with the U.S. space shuttle, it has helped make space missions routine events rather than heroic exploits, and it paved the way for the International Space Station.
Continuously occupied from September 1989 to August 1999, Mir swarmed with cosmonauts and foreign astronauts through most of its tenure. The station holds about 13 tons of Russian and Western scientific equipment, used to conduct 23,000 scientific experiments ranging from production of rare materials to biological research to studies of gravity's impact on human body in long-term flight.
"We spent a long time trying to grow wheat, and were exultant when it finally yielded grain,'' Avdeyev recalled.
His one-time crewmate, Viktor Afanasyev, said that the station provided a unique observation post for watching atmospheric conditions and could serve as a tool for predicting earthquakes.
"No satellite can do that,'' he said proudly.
But as Mir aged, the cosmonauts increasingly had to make repairs. Avdeyev acknowledged that he spent a large part of his latest mission, in 1998-99, trying to spot a minor air leak and fixing other flaws that often made life unpleasant for the crew.
"We had regular problems with the water-purifying system, and that could be quite irritating when we were sitting down for lunch,'' he said. "But we didn't consider it critical.''
Mir's core module was originally intended to last only three to five years. But the development of its successor was frozen when once-generous government funding began withering shortly before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. It very likely would have been dumped eight years ago if the Americans hadn't offered a helping hand, said Russian Aerospace Agency chief Yuri Koptev.
Eager to learn from Russian experience in long-term flights, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration leased time on the station and sent seven astronauts to Mir in 1995-1998. But despite the extra money, Mir developed the wear-and-tear that made 1997 the worst year in its history.
Mir limped from a terrifying fire to a near-fatal collision with a cargo ship, then a series of computer glitches. After the last American astronaut left, NASA urged Russia to dump the outpost and focus on the International Space Station.
But Russian cosmonauts viewed the ISS with suspicion, warning that Russia would be just a junior partner.
"The international space station will give nothing to our space program, we will simply serve the United States,'' Afanasyev said.
Koptev, the space agency chief, has pledged that it will keep Russian rocket plants busy, save jobs and keep Russia on the cutting edge of space research, conducting experiments on its segment of the station.
Skeptics aren't convinced.
"We aren't making a single step forward with the ISS. We knew how to do all that 30 years ago,'' scoffed cosmonaut Anatoly Artsebarsky. "And they will push us out altogether later.''
Still, the cosmonauts will compete vigorously for spaces on its missions. Without Mir, many cosmonauts stand to lose their jobs, said Afanasyev, now a top official at the Cosmonaut Preparation Center in Star City, outside Moscow.
"The Cosmonaut Preparation Center was created to serve our own space program, which is now coming to an end,'' he said bitterly. "We have already received orders to streamline our structure.''
The mood is similarly grim at Mission Control in Korolyov, just north of Moscow. The only commemoration of Mir's 15th anniversary in orbit last month was a piece of paper on a clipboard with handwritten congratulations to workers.
"People don't want a jubilee becoming a funeral party,'' said Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin.
Anyway, space officials said, they were too busy planning the craft's safe descent.
advertisement
