Last rendezvous for Mir


The glory days for Mir are well and truly over

KOROLYVOV, Russia -- A Russian cargo craft successfully docked with the Mir space station on Saturday, beginning the final chapter in the station's 15-year history.

Loaded with more than two tons of fuel, the Progress M1-5 cargo ship will use its thrusters to push Mir out of orbit, sending the station hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific.

Once the jewel of the Soviet Space program, Mir's time was up last December when Russian space officials declared it unsafe and plans began to dump the space station.

March 6 has been set as the tentative date to ditch the 140-ton craft into the South Pacific ocean.

The flawless automatic docking occurred at 8:33 a.m. Moscow time and was greeted with relief and applause at Mission Control.

"The docking went without a hitch," said Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for Mission Control in Korolyov, 12 miles north of Moscow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry sought to calm fears that Mir might crash on land, issuing a statement on Friday that said that debris would be aimed at an ocean area halfway between Australia and Chile.

Space officials said that chunks of Mir, some weighing up to 1,500 pounds, would survive the fiery re-entry and splash into the ocean half-an-hour after Mir enters the atmosphere.

The debris will hit at a speed high enough to smash through 6.5 feet of reinforced concrete, officials said. In 1978, a Soviet satellite crashed in northern Canada, scattering radioactive fragments over the wilderness but causing no injuries. A year later, the unoccupied U.S. Skylab space station fell to Earth, spreading debris over western Australia. No one was hurt.

Mir's orbit has gradually dropped from 215 miles above the Earth in the end of December to about 185 miles. It is expected to come down to 150 miles before the Progress fires its thrusters several times to push the Mir to the Earth.

At the time of its launch in 1986, Mir was on the cutting edge of space research. It has far outlived its original three to five-year lifespan, hosting dozens of cosmonauts and foreign astronauts and providing unique know-how on long-term space flight.

As it aged, the station was plagued by accidents -- from a fire and a near-fatal collision with a cargo ship in 1997 to computer breakdowns and other equipment failures.

After much hesitation, the Russian government decided last December to dump Mir because it was no longer safe and was too expensive to repair. The decision has angered many cosmonauts, space officials and politicians who deplored the loss of the last remaining symbol of Soviet space glory.

NASA has urged Russia to discard Mir and concentrate its scarce resources on the new international space station, a U.S.-led project that was delayed two years because of Russia's failure to provide a key segment.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.

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