Mir 2

Mission Profile

Mir 2 was a planned Soviet and later Russian next-generation space station, studied extensively from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s as the successor to the original Mir station, featuring a pressurized volume more than twice that of Mir and incorporating modular expansion capability. The design evolved through several iterations, with some Mir 2 module concepts eventually being adapted and incorporated into the Russian Orbital Segment of the International Space Station as Zarya, Zvezda, and proposed science modules. As Russia's economic crisis deepened in the early 1990s, Mir 2 was progressively restructured from a standalone Russian station into a partner in the joint US-Russia ISS program, with Russian contributions substituting for the full independent Mir 2 vision. The concept never flew as originally envisioned but its heritage lives on in the Russian ISS modules.