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Space Station "Mir" Will Be Drowned in February By Artashes Toumanov, TheWorldJournal.com 
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Russian government has come up with a decision to drown the Russian space station "Mir" on February 28, 2001 due to its age. "Mir" was in space five times longer than it should have. All the details of "Mir's" life by February next year are known. "Progress-M1" is already finished. This cargo rocket will have to change "Mir's" orbit so that station will be drowned in the Pacific Ocean (1.5 - 2 000 km away from Australia). This is a very complicated operation. But Russian experts insist on its ending. They remind an accident when a non-controlled military satellite with nuclear reactor went down near Canada instead of Pacific Ocean. According to experts, Russian "Mir" loses its altitude (500 meters) every day. This could be dangerous if the station will approach the higher levels of atmosphere. Theoretically speaking, this can't happen just because higher levels of atmosphere will never go up 300-400 km where the station is. But with the speed of "Mir" - and that's 28 000 km an hour, even a discharge gas is enough for a disaster. Then station will lose its speed very fast and crash down. If the station goes down without any control, this could be the most terrible world's catastrophe of the 20th century. It is just impossible to count the damage it could bring. Professionals say that the area of the "Mir's" crash in February will be 1,5 square kilometers. That's three times bigger than France. The important parts of the details are nuclear engines, gas containers and other big metal pieces. They also say that even with an "ideal" process of drowning, there is a chance that some parts of the station will fall down on some inhabited parts of Earth's land. Overall, specialists calculated that thousands of station's parts (up to 700 kg each) would fall from the sky. And if more than 5 billions of people are living under the station's trajectory, each of us has a chance to be involved in this. "That means we have to drown the station by ourselves, in spite of some positive feelings that we have for this complex." - said Uriy Semenov, the President of the Russian Space Committee "Energiya". We remind you, that the first module of the space station "Mir" was on its orbit on February 20, 1986. After that five more modules did connected with "Mir". Now the weight of the station is 136 tons. For all "Mir's" history, more than 80 cargo and transport space ships connected with it (all operations were successful). More than 18 foreign and 36 Russian cosmonauts were living on it during their long expeditions. Overall, 73 people from 9 countries visited "Mir" for its being in space. This year Russian government made five attempts to finish "Mir's" being in space. According to some members of minister's cabinet, to come up with a decision like that is very difficult because the first space station "Mir" has become a whole era in Russian and world's space development program. Now time for the International Space Station has come. ISS will continue the space exploration. © November 29, 2000 |
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