It flew a Spacelab mission and numerous International Space Station assembly missions and rendezvoused with Russia's Mir Space Station.
Even Vladimir Lobachev, Mir's mission-control chief, admitted that the vessel might eventually have to be abandoned.
He is due to install and remove scientific experiments from Mir's exterior.
Until Detsky Mir's new owners can prove that they can at least organise their shop properly, their other plans will be fairy tales.
In April, a failed cooling device in turn caused a break-down in a mechanism that cleans the air in Mir's cabin of carbon dioxide.
The Post reported that a malfunction in Mir's attitude-control system also occurred in March, causing it to list until an alternate back-up system was activated.
In 1991 Mir's predecessor Salyut 7 plunged into the Andes Mountains.
But Mir's last crew returned to earth in July following Moscow's decision to scrap the space station to concentrate its resources on the new International Space Station.
The Russian space agency, pushing back Mir's demise by a week or so, said Tuesday that the spacecraft would probably meet its fiery end between March 18 and March 20.
Mir's path in the sky means it will be visible from the whole of the UK on the evening of 3 January and will put in daily appearances in the night sky over the following week.
Some analysts say the possible change is a ruse to prolong Mir's life past next June, when Russia, whose government is basically bankrupt, promised to bring it down and concentrate its very limited resources on the new station.
The current U.S. astronaut aboard Mir, Mike Foale, has put on a happy face despite the setbacks, but CNN has been told a lack of oxygen and a surplus of carbon dioxide may have contributed to a series of onboard mistakes which threatened the health of the station and could have killed the crew.
It is bad enough that the Clinton Administration is allowing political considerations to enter into, let alone to drive, decisions concerning the further U.S. involvement in the Mir program that should be made exclusively on the basis of realistic net assessments of the considerable safety and financial costs weighed against what are, at best, limited prospective scientific and technical benefits.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Talbott��s ��Vision Thing��: Renewing Mission on Mir
Continue ferrying supplies to Mir but stop having U.S. astronauts live on the station.
Despite widespread misgivings, yet another American -- Michael Foale -- was placed on Mir when astronaut Jerry Linenger's 4 month-long tour came to an end last month.
Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts and a supporter of opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, was quoted Saturday by the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency.
CNN: Rafsanjani doubts Iranians 'satisfied' with election aftermath
Bella will spend eight days on Mir before returning to Earth with the craft's current commander, Padalka.
He may, however, now back a tougher reformist alternative in the person of Mir Hosein Mousavi, prime minister during Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s.
On Monday Boris Bodin, head of the Russian Space Agency's long-term planning department, acknowledged that Moscow may keep Mir flying longer than earlier announced, until several months after the arrival of the living quarters module in July 1999.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said that he has "deep concerns" about the election but that he does not want to be seen meddling in Iran's affairs or picking sides between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his rival Mir Hossein Moussavi.
The strike was near the village of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, one of seven districts in Pakistan's tribal regions.
"Of course we should be prepared to use any scientific potential we have on Mir, " said Alexei Krasnov, deputy head of the Russian Space Agency's international cooperation department.
The plan as of now is for the first piece of station hardware, which looks like the central core of Mir, to be launched from Baikonur in June, with the first U.S. piece, called Node 1, to be launched on the shuttle in early July.
Separately from publicly traded OHL, his privately held Grupo Villar Mir is the largest independent producer of hydroelectric power in Spain, the world's leading producer of silicon metal, a major fertilizer producer, and a real estate developer with projects on the Mediterranean coast, in Florida and in Texas.
When Mir was launched in February 1986 it was seen as a major symbol of the Soviet Union's prestige and technological advancement.
应用推荐