Ironworks Gaming Forum - A farewell and salute

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Down and down it goes, where Mir will land, nobody knows
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Michael Cabbage
Sentinel Space Editor

March 18, 2001

CAPE CANAVERAL -- The Mir space station won't hit downtown Orlando this
week. Well, Russian authorities are pretty sure it won't, anyway.

Instead, the storied outpost is supposed to be headed for a suicide
plunge from orbit to a watery grave early Thursday. About 80 percent of
the 135-ton station is expected to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, while
1,500 or so surviving chunks -- some as large as a compact car -- rain
down on a remote part of the South Pacific.

But this is Mir.

The near-legendary tendency of the station's systems to fail at critical
times has emergency managers on the edge of their seats. Plus, nothing
so large has been brought down before. An unlikely mistake could put
populated areas in harm's way.

"This is the Super Bowl of re-entries," said Bill Ailor, director of The
Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies
near Los Angeles. "It's likely to have a big footprint [impact area] and
lots of it will survive."

For the record, the vast majority of experts are confident all will go
smoothly. The Russians have successfully scuttled more than 80 smaller
spacecraft in the Pacific during the past 30 years. But a few past
re-entry problems have scattered debris far and wide. More than 80
governments around the globe are taking the threat seriously.

How seriously? The United States and countries in Europe have agreed to
help Moscow track Mir. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is on
standby. Australia has developed a Mir warning system and national
contingency plan. Japan's defense minister canceled a U.S. trip to
monitor the event. And, perhaps most telling, the Russians have taken
out $200 million in liability insurance.

"If the station goes out of control, her wreckage could fall on
practically any area of the planet," admitted Yuri Koptev, general
director of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.

However, Koptev insists there is a 97 percent probability that won't
happen. And even if it does, he added, the chance of Mir's wreckage
hitting a city is about 1 in 5,000.

A Russian symbol

Economics, not physics, ultimately sealed Mir's doom. The outpost has
survived the harsh space environment since 1986. But an even harsher
political and fiscal environment in Moscow finally forced Russia's
cash-starved space program to pull the plug.

A symbol of Russian technological might and national pride, Mir's demise
has been met with fierce opposition at home and glee in Washington. U.S.
officials pressured Moscow for years to abandon the aging outpost and
focus Russia's scarce resources on the 16-nation international space
station project headed by NASA.

The Russians reluctantly agreed last fall when plans to keep Mir afloat
with commercial projects -- including tourist visits, a television show
where contestants would compete for a stay in orbit and plans to film a
risque sci-fi movie there -- didn't work out.

"The [Mir] space station is a place that the world recognized as ours,"
cosmonaut Alexander Lazutkin said. "Now as we scuttle Mir, we won't have
a piece of space that is ours."

Russians argue with some justification that Mir was the first true
international space station. Despite its origin as a Soviet military
project, the outpost hosted 104 visitors from 12 countries. Seven
Americans made long-duration stays from 1995 to 1998, when NASA flew
nine shuttle docking missions there.

However, Mir also earned a reputation as a broken-down rattletrap during
a harrowing six-month stretch in 1997. A faulty oxygen canister started
an onboard fire, almost forcing the crew to abandon ship. The station's
central computer and life-support systems failed repeatedly. And a
supply ship crashed into Mir during a botched docking, crushing a solar
panel and causing an air leak in one of the station's six modules.

Late-night comedians got plenty of laughs at Mir's expense. But the
station proved as tough and resilient as the culture that built it.

Russian resourcefulness kept Mir flying three times longer than its
original design life of three to five years. Some argue the breakdowns
have paid huge dividends as assembly of the new international station
has ramped up.

"The irony is that Mir's condition gave us the opportunity to learn how
to maintain and service a space station in orbit," said Roald Sagdeev,
director of the East West Space Science Center at the University of
Maryland.

The downside is that cutting-edge research was a rarity on Mir.
Cosmonauts rewrote the book on long stays in space there, proving humans
could remain in orbit for extended periods with no lasting ill effects.

Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent 438 consecutive days on Mir. Sergei
Avdeyev amassed a total of 747 days during three separate visits. Both
are world records. But because Mir lacked sophisticated science
equipment, research was mostly limited to general observations in orbit
and tests before and after flight.

"They were so busy trying to save the station it took all of the
effort," Sagdeev said. "There was a little science in the early years.
There was a little later when the Americans visited. But most of the
work was engineering and repairs."

The last hurrah

Mir's kamikaze homecoming is set for about 1:30 a.m. Thursday. A number
of factors, however, including solar activity that increases drag in the
atmosphere, could shift the time as much as a day earlier or later.

The outpost, vacant since last June, has steadily sunk from its former
perch 250 miles above Earth. When Mir reaches an altitude of 137 miles,
de-orbit operations will begin in earnest. A Progress supply ship that
docked with Mir on Jan. 26 will provide the needed push. Flight
controllers plan to fire the Progress ship's engines twice late
Wednesday to lower Mir's orbit before a third and final 11-minute engine
burn over Russia brings the station down.

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will be in constant contact with
the Russian Mission Control Center outside Moscow to relay the latest
data from the U.S. military's worldwide tracking network.

"The Russians have their own set of sensors but they're all located
within the borders of the former Soviet Union," said Nicholas Johnson,
program manager for orbital debris studies at Johnson Space Center.
"There are many hours of the day when they don't have an opportunity to
track Mir."

If all goes well, the final engine firing will force Mir down over a
remote strip of the South Pacific 3,700 miles long by 300 miles wide,
about midway between Australia and South America. Mir's antennas and
solar wings will be vaporized 70 miles high. Fuel tanks will explode and
most of the outpost's six camper-sized modules will break apart and burn
up by the 50-mile mark. It's expected to take 30 to 45 minutes for an
estimated 27 tons of remaining wreckage to hit the ocean.

Experts say Russian flight controllers face two big uncertainties going
into the maneuver.

"Are the computers and communications going to be up when you need
them?" re-entry specialist Ailor asked. "Given Mir's history, they must
really be chewing their nails over that one. And there's also the
question of: 'As this dips lower into the atmosphere, will it stay
stable?' "

The Progress ship has a less complex computer that might be able to take
over the operation if Mir's fails. But serious problems could leave
wreckage almost anywhere. Russian oddsmakers put the chance of a U.S.
strike at less than 2 percent. NASA's Johnson and other authorities
agree there is little to worry about.

No one has ever been injured by manmade debris from space. However,
there have been close calls. Part of NASA's only space station, Skylab,
came down in the Australian outback in 1979, reportedly killing a cow. A
Soviet military satellite showered the Canadian Arctic with debris in
1978. And Mir's predecessor, Salyut 7, crashed in South America's Andes
Mountains in 1991. Unlike Mir, none of those re-entries was controlled.

Wherever the station comes down, its destruction will mark the end of an
era. While Mir -- which means both world and peace in Russian -- remains
the butt of jokes, history likely will accord it a legacy more worthy of
its name.

"The epitaph is that Mir was an important element in ending the Cold
War," said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.com policy research
group. "It was the vehicle on which the U.S. and Russians learned to
start living and working together in space."

Colin McMahon, the Chicago Tribune's Moscow bureau chief, contributed to
this story.

Michael Cabbage can be reached at mcabbage@orlandosentinel.com or
321-639-0522.

Copyright (c) 2001, Orlando Sentinel

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