Mir to be scuttled next February
Russia sets schedule to deorbit space station into Pacific
MOSCOW, Nov. 16 — The 14-year-old Mir space station will be ditched in February in a controlled descent that will send it hurtling into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, officials decided Thursday.
THE DECISION to abandon the ailing space station was taken at a meeting of the Russian Cabinet. Officials have wrestled for months over what to do with the Mir, which Moscow can no longer afford to maintain. The Cabinet approved a plan to crash the Mir into the Pacific east of Australia sometime around February.
Officials decided to discard the 140-ton, 14-year-old station — once a symbol of Soviet space glory — after attempts failed to find private investors to come up with the money to keep it in orbit.
The government decided to abandon the Mir earlier this year, but extended its lifetime after the private Netherlands-based MirCorp leased time on Mir and paid for its operation. MirCorp has pledged to raise more funds to keep the station aloft, but the government has grown increasingly skeptical about the company's ability to do so.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Thursday that it is Russia's international commitment to safely discard the Mir. "One of our obligations is to ensure the safety of the final stage of the Mir's flight," he said.
In calling for careful preparation for deorbiting the Mir, Russian Space agency chief Yuri Koptev on Wednesday recalled a Soviet satellite that crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.
The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, scattering debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.
A likely scenario for lowering the Mir's orbit safely involves a cargo ship docking with the station, and then firing rockets to push the station quickly into the atmosphere over an unpopulated area. Officials have said they may send up a new crew to the Mir in January to prepare the craft for the final descent.
The Mir cluster of six modules, bristling with solar panels and antennas, has far outlived engineers' original expectations. The inside is scarred by a 1997 fire and one module, Spektr, is sealed off after a collision that year with a small craft ferrying away the station's garbage.
NASA has urged Russia to dump the Mir and concentrate its scarce resources on the new international space station, a 16-nation project led by the United States but using some Russian technology developed on Mir.
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"I will gather myself around my faith, for light does the darkness most fear." - Jewel
Russia sets schedule to deorbit space station into Pacific
MOSCOW, Nov. 16 — The 14-year-old Mir space station will be ditched in February in a controlled descent that will send it hurtling into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, officials decided Thursday.
THE DECISION to abandon the ailing space station was taken at a meeting of the Russian Cabinet. Officials have wrestled for months over what to do with the Mir, which Moscow can no longer afford to maintain. The Cabinet approved a plan to crash the Mir into the Pacific east of Australia sometime around February.
Officials decided to discard the 140-ton, 14-year-old station — once a symbol of Soviet space glory — after attempts failed to find private investors to come up with the money to keep it in orbit.
The government decided to abandon the Mir earlier this year, but extended its lifetime after the private Netherlands-based MirCorp leased time on Mir and paid for its operation. MirCorp has pledged to raise more funds to keep the station aloft, but the government has grown increasingly skeptical about the company's ability to do so.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Thursday that it is Russia's international commitment to safely discard the Mir. "One of our obligations is to ensure the safety of the final stage of the Mir's flight," he said.
In calling for careful preparation for deorbiting the Mir, Russian Space agency chief Yuri Koptev on Wednesday recalled a Soviet satellite that crashed into northern Canada in 1978, in a major embarrassment for the Soviet leadership. Nobody was hurt but radioactive fragments were scattered over the wilderness.
The unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979 when its orbit deteriorated faster than anticipated, scattering debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.
A likely scenario for lowering the Mir's orbit safely involves a cargo ship docking with the station, and then firing rockets to push the station quickly into the atmosphere over an unpopulated area. Officials have said they may send up a new crew to the Mir in January to prepare the craft for the final descent.
The Mir cluster of six modules, bristling with solar panels and antennas, has far outlived engineers' original expectations. The inside is scarred by a 1997 fire and one module, Spektr, is sealed off after a collision that year with a small craft ferrying away the station's garbage.
NASA has urged Russia to dump the Mir and concentrate its scarce resources on the new international space station, a 16-nation project led by the United States but using some Russian technology developed on Mir.
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"I will gather myself around my faith, for light does the darkness most fear." - Jewel
