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Retiring Mir: Russians plan for space station's fiery demise
HOUSTON (CNN) -- After 12 hardy years in space, the end is finally near for Space Station Mir. As early as next summer, Mir will be abandoned and allowed to plummet back to Earth.
Chances are it won't be another Skylab, but Mir's suicidal dive over the Pacific will be no more graceful than that of its clunky predecessor, just less hazardous.
At NASA's prodding, the Russian Space Agency recently agreed to begin preparing for Mir's impending demise. But the two sides still are haggling over when to pull the plug on the space station, marked by a series of mechanical failures in its final years.
The Russian Space Agency is targeting December 1999 for Mir's searing plunge through the atmosphere. It is reluctant to give up Mir until the International Space Station, or ISS, is inhabited.
NASA, however, is pushing for a July 1999 exit.
The Russians should have sent up the first station component last November, but the flight has been delayed a year because of their inability to complete another part, called the service module.
The Russian Space Agency didn't have enough government funds to finish the crucial module on time. More delays could be looming if Russia cannot supply the promised number of Progress and Soyuz ships, said Mark Geyer, a NASA station manager.
The way NASA sees it, the Russians cannot afford Progress cargo ships and Soyuz manned capsules for two orbiting stations. Something has to go and that something is Mir.
"It's a resource problem," said Keith Reiley, a space station manager. "We're concerned if there is a problem, ISS will get the short end of the stick."
It is with some reluctance that the Russian Space Agency is preparing to say goodbye to Mir, the longest inhabited space settlement.
"Imagine how we felt when the lunar program was canceled," said Jack Bacon, another NASA manager, who likened the space station to a '52 Chevy. "At some point you've got to trade it in."
Here is NASA's take on Russia's preliminary plans to vaporize Mir:
Launched a few months apart with fuel, food and other supplies, Progress ships no longer are being used to boost the 250-mile-high station. As a result, Mir already has begun its slow, drawn-out descent thanks to the constant tug of Earth's gravity.
The Progress ships, docked one at a time, will lower one end of Mir's orbit through periodic engine firings over the next year.
The final series of shoves will begin a month before Mir's demise.
By then, the last cosmonauts will be gone and the station will be in a lopsided orbit with the low end some 100 miles above Earth.
A Progress commanded by ground controllers steadily will lower the low end of Mir's orbit. At the same time, the atmosphere will drag down the station even more.
After a month of this, ground controllers will fire the Progress ship's main engine one last time. The braking will slow Mir enough for gravity to catch the 120-ton station and send it crashing down, hopefully over an unpopulated swath of the Pacific south of Alaska but north of Hawaii.
Most of the station should burn up on the way down. Sturdy pieces like fuel tanks may survive, however; hence the remote Pacific locale.
By planning for all this now, space officials hope to avoid the hype and haphazardness that accompanied Skylab's 1979 fall, which was largely uncontrolled. Nearly one-third of the 78-ton space station survived the intense heat of re-entry, and thousands of pieces crashed into the Indian Ocean and onto Australia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Space station construction under way
- Cash woes hobble once glorious Russian space program
- Mir's woes raise doubts about U.S.-Russian cooperation
- Ten years and still going
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