The Mir Space Station

World or Peace, either one is Mir. More significantly, Mir is the first consistently inhabitable research station in space. The space station was based on previous mini Soyuz stations. The Mir station spent 5,511 days in space and was inhabited for 4,594 of those days by a total of 137 people from 39 manned craft and supplied by 68 unmanned spaceships. The Mir station was assembled module by module with the first one being launched on February 19^th, 1986. The station saw 6 more modules dock with her by 1996. After all parts were installed the station weighed an astounding 124,340 kg. The new modules for the station included various research quarters that were added to keep the station up to data and promote more scientific activity.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin started working towards mutual space exploration. One astronaut boarded the Mir station and two cosmonauts border an American shuttle. While the Americans where on the space station several disasters struck. On February 23^rd, 1997 a large fire started in the station. On June 25^th, 1997 an unmanned Progress rocket collided with the station. The collision left a hole in the Spektr module which was quickly sealed off from the rest of the station. Several space walks, including one inside the Spektr module, were required to reseal the module. In both disasters complete evacuations via a Soyuz escape craft was narrowly avoided.

All the modules (except for the American docking module) were raised into orbit by Russian Proton 8K82K rockets. The Americans launched their docking module in the space shuttle. The Proton rocket was the largest expandable launch system until the Energia first flew in 1987. Supplies were ferried by unmanned Progress rockets and crews were taken up by Soyuz rockets and Space Shuttles.

The station was constantly inhabited until 1999 (except for two short periods of time) and then was abandoned. In June 1998 the last astronaut left and on June 16^th, 2000 the last two cosmonauts returned. The journey of the 15 year old space station was abruptly ended by Earth’s atmosphere as Mir burned up in on re-entry on March 23^rd, 2001 near Nadi, Fuji.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/mir.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/mir.html

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/rsa/modules.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_rocket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mir_Expeditions