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Friday, 23 March, 2001, 09:25 GMT
Mir meets fiery end
The fragments that survived re-entry hit their target
The fiery remnants of Russia's Mir space station have crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean.
The procedure to bring down Mir was a triumph for Russian ground controllers. Final manoeuvres passed off flawlessly and the wreckage hit its intended target area. Australian officials monitoring the descent put the platform's watery grave at 160 degrees west, 40 degrees south, or 5,800 km (3,600 miles) off the eastern coast of Australia. These co-ordinates were confirmed by Russian data. Brilliant display Moscow sent a final command to Mir at 0507 GMT as it passed over the Mediterranean. This lit the engines of the Progress supply ship docked to the platform and plunged the pride of the Russian space programme into a catastrophic collision with the Earth's atmosphere.
As fragments hurtled downwards, some of the best views of the re-entry could be had on the islands of Fiji. Eyewitness Mark Herring told the BBC: "It really was quite a brilliant, spectacular display. "We had nine to 12 principal pieces, highly illuminated, trailing smoke, dashing through the atmosphere in about 20 seconds from horizon line to horizon line." Impact zone
Deputy flight commander in the Moscow control room, Viktor Blagov, said it was impossible to know precisely how much of Mir survived re-entry. "It is only the inhabitants of the ocean who have the exact information," he joked. The de-orbiting procedure could not have gone better. According to officials in Moscow, the final impulse from the Progress engines lasted slightly longer than originally planned, allowing the size of the final impact zone to be narrowed. Space power Yuri Semyonov, president of Energia, the company that built and operated the platform, said: "No problems emerged during the bringing of the Mir out of orbit; all happened the way we expected."
"They did not make any wrong steps, and their calculations had an accuracy up to one millimetre," he said. "Mir proved Russia cannot just build things but can operate them too. It once again shows Russia is and will remain a space power."
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