Launch of Mir

Mir was a Soviet and later Russian space station that was assembled in low Earth orbit, its core module launched on 19 February 1986. It was the first modular space station, built up over a decade by adding new sections such as Kvant, Kristall and Spektr, which were carried up by rockets and shuttle flights. Mir hosted crews from many countries and made long-duration spaceflight routine, with cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spending more than 400 days aboard in a single mission. In the 1990s it was the setting for the Shuttle-Mir program between the United States and Russia, which prepared for building the International Space Station. The station suffered a fire and a collision in 1997, and it was deliberately brought down into the Pacific Ocean in March 2001.

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