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Mir Abandoned & EO-27 Crew Lands

Filed 8/27/99

Mir Abandoned, Last Crew Leaves

After weeks of preperations, the EO-27 crew of Viktor Afanasyev, Sergei Avdeyev and French man Jean-Paul Haignere finished preparing Mir for unmanned flight and performed a final farewell ceremony before climbing into the Soyuz TM-29 and landing in the early morning on Aug. 28 in Kazakstan.

With the farewell transmission occasionally fading in and out of view as Mir passed over a Russian communications ground station as Afanasyev, Avdeyev and Haignere each made breif statements thanking those involoved in the program and reassuring the world that a future crew could reactivate the station.

Haignere, Afanasyev, and Avdeyev	Haignere floats into the Soyuz TM-29 orbital module
Haignere is followed by Avdeyev	Afanasyev joines the others

After the statement, the crew floated in to the Soyuz in front of the camera and closed the Mir hatch. Most likely, they floated back inside to shutdown the camera and lights before the real departure.

	The crew said "so long Mir" as the Soyuz undocked.
Mir drifts into the distance...

Progress M42 was left docked to Mir to provide a fully redundant way of controlling the complex, at least for a time. Mir itself is operating on a newly installed rudimentary control system. Theoritically, Mir can continue flying for many months before it either 1.) re-enters the atmosphere and burns up, 2.) receives a new Progress supply ship for reboost or controlled re-entry, or 3.) recieves a new crewed Soyuz for another period of use or preperations for re-entry.

Given that funding for both final options is not foreseen or likely, Mir appears doomed for a firey demise in the skys of Earth in an unpredictable location somewhere between 51.6 degrees North and South Latitude.

Russian space officials had lobbied for keeping Mir manned up to and after the decision for the return of the EO-27 crew had reached the point of no return. Boris Ostrimov, on May 26, stated the only reason to keep Mir operational was the 10,000 kg. of experimental apparatus on the station when in fact most of the equipment is not in frequent use and a substantial portion of crew time is spent in maintanence of the station itself.

As of May, Mir was only budgeted until August, and all other manned space flight funds were allocated to the ISS.

Mir is safe in its orbit until at least Feburary of 2000 when orbital decay may begin to be an issue. An object like Mir has not reentered the atmosphere uncontrolled before. It's only comparison is Salyut 7 and Kosmos 1686 which were similar modules to Mir that returned uncontrolled over the South Pacific and South America. Some parts of the craft fell to the ground but no damage was noted. But Mir has 7 modules and the dynamics of 7 joined modules during reentry is not well understood. Skylab also reentered under minimal control (attitude control only) and consisted of 2 major modules (the lab and the ATM), and is of similar size to Mir. It also rained down peices of metal and fiberglass parts over Australia but again no significant damage was noted. Most likely, if Mir goes out of control, it will do the same.

Other News & Status Reports: Chris van den Berg's Mir News  RKK Energia News Florida Today Space Page CBS Up to the Minute : Bill Harwoods Space Space Jonathans Space Report KSC Newsroom

Images from NASA & RSA

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