Mir in mire
the old, frail and battered Mir spacecraft will be abandoned by December 1999, say Russian space officials. Cosmonauts on board would soon begin to manoeuvre it into a lower orbit. The officials say that a module would be launched towards Mir that would carry fuel to propel the station towards the Earth. The station will fall into the Earth and crash into the sea.
Mir's demise is being taken as a sign of Russia's declining fortunes in space. The end of Mir will mark the end of Russia's world leadership in orbital space exploration,' said Yuri Semyonov, president of rkk Energia, the company that built Mir and oversees it.
Mir is the world's only orbiting manned space station. With 12 years aloft, the space station has already surpassed its original life expectancy of five years. In this period, nearly 100 cosmonauts have served the space station.
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