Mir to come down on Friday

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, MARCH 20. Russia has fixed the final date of the Mir space station splashdown in the Pacific for Friday.

The decision was taken on Tuesday at a meeting of a government commission responsible for safely deorbiting the 137- ton space station, by far the heaviest space object to have fallen on earth so far.

When Mir descends to a critical altitude of 220 km in the earlier hours of Friday, the Progress cargo ship docked with the station will fire its engines three times with the interval of several hours to send the 130-ton Mir hurtling down into the South Pacific between Australia and Chile at about noon IST on Friday.

Most of the station is expected to break up and burn in the earth's atmosphere, but around 20 tonnes of debris are likely to rain down in a remote area of the South Pacific 200 km wide and 6,000 km long, between New Zealand and Chile. Though there are no islands in the target area, the Russian space agency has taken out insurance for $200 millions to cover possible damage.

The biggest space station brought down from orbit so far was the American Skylab, which had half the mass of Mir. Skylab hit the outback of Australia in 1979. Russia's Salyut-7 space station also weired off the planned descent path, hitting South America in 1991.

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Section  : International
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