In a spectacular spectacle, the remains of the Mir space station caught fire in the sky and plunged into the ocean. No one was hurt by the heavy metal remains, and in the South Pacific they breathed a sigh of relief
In a spectacular spectacle, the remains of the Mir space station caught fire in the sky and plunged into the ocean. No one was hurt by the heavy metal remains, and in the South Pacific they breathed a sigh of relief.
The remnants of the Mir space station ignited Friday morning over the Fiji Islands and left behind a spectacular trail as they plunged into the Pacific Ocean on Friday. With this, the space station ended a career of 15 years.
The space station's engine control center created a long 20-re burn in Russia, a final signal sent minutes later that changed the space station's flight path and dropped it into its designated remote area in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.
"We saw five or six pieces of the space station, with a huge trail of smoke visible in the air for 10 to 15 seconds," said a photographer for the Reuters news agency, "after which several ultrasonic booms were heard. It was a once in a lifetime experience." According to early estimates, between twenty and forty tons of metal were supposed to survive the encounter with the atmosphere and fall into the ocean. Countries in the South Pacific - such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan - were on standby in case the metal remnants deviated from their course and hit the ground instead of the ocean. But the remains did not deviate from their course, nor did they hit any merchant ships or fishing boats that were in the area. A fleet of 27 boats, fishing for tuna fish right in the target area, were not harmed by the remains.
Russia currently has no means of determining exactly where the debris fell, a senior Russian space agency official said, but the Russians intend to collect information from various vessels and analyze it. Official sources in Australia said they believe the Mir space station landed in the exact uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean where the Russians planned to drop the remains.
"The Mir completed its mission successfully," the Russian control center announced, "this was unprecedented in the history of space exploration." The head of the Russian space agency, Yuri Koptev, said that "Hamir proved that Russia can not only build things but also operate them. Russia was and remains a space power."
