Mir

Mission Profile

Mir (Russian for Peace or World) was the Soviet Union's and Russia's modular space station, launched as the core Mir base block on 19 February 1986 and expanded over a decade into a complex of six additional modules including Kvant-1, Kvant-2, Kristall, Spektr, Priroda, and a Shuttle docking module. At its peak Mir was 33 meters long and weighed 124 tonnes, hosting continuous human habitation from September 1989 through June 2000 and becoming the site of record-breaking long-duration missions by cosmonauts Valeri Polyakov (437 days) and others. Mir hosted 104 cosmonauts and 44 visitors from 12 countries, conducted over 23,000 experiments, and demonstrated that humans could live and work in space for durations sufficient for a Mars mission. The station was deliberately deorbited over the Pacific Ocean on 23 March 2001 after 15 years in orbit.