March 23, 2001 at Pacific Ocean The Russian orbital station Mir was sunk. The official reasons for the destruction of the station were its extreme deterioration, outdated equipment and lack of funds to maintain the complex.

The third generation Soviet orbital manned complex "Mir" was a huge and complex multi-purpose structure. It was the first modular orbital station in history - the basis was a base block with six docking nodes.

The base unit was launched into Earth orbit on February 20, 1986. Then, over the course of 10 years, six more modules were docked to it. The very first crew at the station were astronauts Leonid Kizim And Vladimir Soloviev, who arrived aboard Mir on March 15, 1986.

In total, during the operation of the station, 139 people visited there, including 62 foreign citizens from 12 countries of the world. The Mir complex opened the way for the construction of the International space station- much of what was used to create the ISS was first tested on Mir.

Initially designed for a 5-year operational life, the station was in space for 15 years and until 2001 was the only “space home” that allowed crews to stay and work in orbit for quite a long time, which provided truly invaluable experience in living near the Earth. outer space.

At the end of the 1990s, various problems began to periodically arise on board the station associated with the constant failure of instruments and systems. 1997 was a particularly fruitful year for incidents.

On February 23, there was a fire at the station - an oxygen regeneration bomb ignited. On April 29, the air conditioning system failed due to a leak, and on June 25, 1997, the Progress M-34 transport ship, while performing manual docking in the teleoperator control mode, collided with the docked Spektr module.

The latest emergency was the most unpleasant in the entire history of the station. The collision resulted in depressurization of the module, damage to the solar panels, temporary disruption of the station's power supply, and loss of orientation. We had to literally cut the module off from the rest of the complex.

The decree to cease operation of the legendary Mir space station was signed in January 2001. Among the reasons officially named were the depletion of the station's life, incidents and accidents at the station, and expensive maintenance (approximately $200 million per year).

Numerous projects have been proposed to save the station. It is known that Iran has offered to finance the station for another two or three years. Tehran was interested in the military use of the station, since the equipment located at the station carried a double load - civilian and military.

However, the Mir orbital station was sunk in the Pacific Ocean on March 23, 2001. The operation to sink the Mir was unique and was carried out using the Progress cargo ship docked to it. He gave the station the final impetus, which made it possible to successfully remove it from orbit at an altitude of 159 kilometers above the Earth.

At about 9 o'clock in the morning Moscow time, the station entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, where it collapsed, and unburned fragments fell into a given area - into a shipping-free area of ​​the Pacific Ocean near the Fiji Islands (40 degrees south latitude and 160 degrees west longitude).

On February 19, 1986, the Mir space station, the first modular orbital station, began operation. It was sent into space from the Baikonur cosmodrome: the base unit was launched into orbit on February 20, 1986. Then, over the course of 10 years, six more modules were docked one after another. The station was inhabited for about 10 years - from September 5, 1989 to August 26, 1999. In total, during the operation of the station, 139 people visited here, including 62 foreign citizens from 12 countries, more than 23 thousand tasks were performed. scientific experiments, 78 exits in open space with a total duration of approximately 360 hours, 28 long-term main expeditions and 16 visiting expeditions lasting from a week to a month, many world records were set. In the late 1990s, the station began to experience numerous problems associated with the failure of various instruments and systems, which became extremely expensive to maintain in working order. On March 23, 2001, the station was flooded in a special area in the South Pacific Ocean, near the Fiji Islands. We decided to list five reasons why it was decided to flood the Mir station.

WEAR OF THE STATION

Initially designed for a 5-year service life, the station was in space for 15 years and until 2001 was the only “space home” that allowed it to stay and work in orbit for a long time. Since the late 1990s, the station began serious problems with equipment that began to fail en masse. From time to time, emergency situations arose; there were several fires associated with defects in oxygen bombs. The most serious incident occurred on June 25, 1997, when the Progress cargo ship rammed the Mir station, severely damaging the Spektr scientific module: the station’s newest module was disabled and depressurized. At that time, Spectrum supplied the main part of the energy to the station, so power outages began. The power supply to the Mir station was completely restored only by August 1997. However, the accident left many other problems at the station: malfunctions began to occur in the stabilizing gyroscopes, unbalanced by the impact, the central computer and the station's cooling system. Radio communications failed, gyrodynes failed, and coolants periodically failed. During the last mission, which took place before 1999, the main efforts of the crew were aimed simply at keeping the station running.

HUGE FINANCIAL COSTS

THE STATION WAS DANGEROUS

The station has become dangerous both for the astronauts on board and for the entire population of the Earth. The state of the station's automation in the absence of the crew, who finally left the station in August 1999, became critical. The Mir computer was turned off and the station was in sleep mode. At any moment, the gyrodynes, which had exhausted their service life, could fail, and the station, having lost orientation, would lose energy and control and turn into a ballistic projectile, slowly descending from orbit. Mir's orbital altitude was less than 250 kilometers, and every day the station dropped a kilometer lower. No one could predict, in this case, where the station would fall.

TERMINATION OF SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES

Numerous experiments were carried out on board the Mir, which gave science a lot the most important results, however, the value of the research programs carried out on it shortly before the sinking was reduced to almost zero. Conduct research on old station“The world” has become unsafe, expensive, and often impossible. The Mir equipment was very outdated; accordingly, science, which had advanced far during this time, did not need the research that could be carried out on such equipment. In addition, there already existed a new ISS with the latest equipment, more comfortable conditions and a greater degree of safety, on which it was more convenient and efficient to conduct all research.

What problems can space exploration bring to earthlings?

In 2013, at the age of 69, the remarkable Russian cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov, who had many orders and medals for his great services in the field of research, development and use of outer space, many years of conscientious work, and active social activities.

During his professional career as an astronaut, he made four flights to spaceships"Soyuz T-7" to "Salyut-7" (returned to "Soyuz T-5"), "Soyuz T-8" to "Salyut-7", "Soyuz TM-8" and "Soyuz TM-17". Moreover, both recent expeditions were carried out on the Russian orbital station Mir.

His total flight time was 372 days 22 hours. Serebrov performed a total of 10 spacewalks. These records were surpassed only by another Russian cosmonaut, Anatoly Solovyov, in 1997. The total operating time of Serebrov in airless space is 31 hours 49 minutes.

But few people know that for the last ten years of his life, after his last expedition on the Mir orbital station, the cosmonaut suffered from an unknown disease that he contracted in space.

The thing is that terrestrial bacteria, fungi and viruses, under the influence of powerful cosmic radiation, are capable of various mutations. They turn into strong and extremely resistant and resilient organisms, which are practically, and often completely impossible to fight. For one day in space, an astronaut receives an annual dose of cosmic radiation, which we usually receive on Earth. Microorganisms, once released into space and exposed to radiation, become extremely dangerous to humans. Not even the most modern medicine can cope with them, since they have no analogues on Earth. The vitality of these viruses, fungi and bacteria is amazing, they are not afraid of extremely low and high temperatures, and not a single medicine can take them.

Later, returning to Earth, Serebrov said: “I blew out the filter, I looked at some pieces there at the ends. I stuck a wire in there and pulled out a one and a half meter worm. It was flexible, yellow, with dark brown spots. Like a snake.”

One bacterium, in space conditions, mutated so that it could turn into a huge slug, which cannot be found on Earth. The cosmonauts were shocked by what they saw, and a few days later Serebrov developed a high fever, nausea and vomiting.

On Earth, the symptoms of an unknown disease began to intensify. Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea and constant weakness did not allow me to live normally. Alexander Serebrov turned to the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology for help, but doctors were unable to make an accurate diagnosis.

All that the doctors could tell the astronaut was that “you have an unknown fungal infection in the intestines, but we have no analogues on Earth - it’s some kind of mutant, so we don’t know how to treat it.”

The MIR station, which was attacked by mutated microorganisms, was suddenly flooded in the Pacific Ocean, although according to the official version it was flooded because it had exhausted its resource. True, it is unknown whether space fungi, viruses and bacteria could survive while passing through the station in the earth’s atmosphere. Some scientists do not reject this possibility. And you yourself understand what follows from this.

It's funny that the decision to flood the station at one time served as a massive outburst of PutinLil. How little we still know to evaluate the decisions being made.

Here is just one of the many PutinSlinks on this topic from Boris Mironov

“No arguments from scientists, cosmonauts, or military personnel convinced President Putin to stop the decision that was fatal for Russia...
The betrayal of power is obvious and visible in the destruction of the basis of modern state defense - its cosmic stronghold.
Without a powerful space base there cannot be a powerful state, and the concept of developing the latest weapons, and the modern doctrine of warfare are all based on space.
But everything that we have achieved since 1957 in space, since the world’s first domestic artificial satellite Earth, all this was destroyed at the roots, destroyed meaningfully and mercilessly,” etc....

23 On March 2001, the Mir orbital station was sunk at the KKK in the Pacific Ocean.
The reason is the obsolescence of the equipment and the financial impracticality of maintaining it in working order. The station already achieved a “cosmic feat”, operating almost three times longer than originally planned.

The Mir orbital scientific station was launched into space on February 28, 1986. Then, over the course of 10 years, six more modules were docked to it, one after another. Four of which, “Kvant-2”, “Kristall”, “Spectrum” and “Priroda”, were docked from the axial control system to the peripheral ones using a space manipulator. The station replaced the Salyut orbital station, which for a decade and a half became the world's only manned space laboratory for long-term scientific and technical experiments and research of the human body in space.

During the existence of the station, more than 23,000 experiments were carried out on it, two records for the duration of stay in space were set by Valery Polyakov and Shannon Lucid. The station was visited by 104 cosmonauts from 12 countries as part of 28 expeditions. 29 cosmonauts and 6 astronauts went into outer space. The first experiments were carried out on plants.

The Soviet Union and Russia hospitably allowed everyone to use the station, including Americans. The station appears in a number of science fiction films and cartoons, such as the movie Virus and the television animated series South Park.

THE MAIN ACCIDENT occurred on June 25, 1997. While practicing manual docking, the Progress M-34 cargo ship collided with the Spektr module of the Mir station. The collision resulted in depressurization of the module, damage to the solar panels, temporary disruption of the station's power supply, and loss of orientation. We had to literally cut the module off from the rest of the complex.

At the end of its journey, the station was already dangerous for the astronauts. All everyday work at that time boiled down to an undying struggle with the failure of something, after which the next failure of something else immediately followed - and this routine already bore some kind of stamp of routine for the Russian MCC employees and cosmonauts. The astronauts fixed everything that was broken, showing miracles of ingenuity and ingenious resourcefulness. Many things were repaired with a regular screwdriver and tape. The Americans, who themselves had never encountered such wear and tear on equipment (and didn’t even have a station), gladly showed the Mir station in their films, mocking our cosmonauts, who, in their opinion, walk around the station in hats with earflaps, fixing everything with sledgehammers)) ). The long icicles on the ceiling of the Russian station deserve special mention; it is unknown how they grew in zero gravity... Do you remember one of the films? I was pleased with the strong unshaven appearance of the astronaut and his movements as a very drunk but determined man. Unfortunately, he was there with a balalaika, but without a bear))))

The Mir station was dying, but the experiments continued anyway. Before the French flew to the station, the latter were very worried. And ours came up with a psychological move, creating a special server through which everyone in the world could look online at the data from the station and monitor the operation of its life support devices, etc.

And now it's time MYSTICS. I can’t vouch for the reliability of the following information, but it was discussed a lot on various forums and it would be wrong not to bring it))) Immediately after the fall of the station, the European Space Agency (ESA), which remotely monitored the work day and night and around the clock (in three shifts) Russian space station, expressed its bewilderment at the ongoing broadcast of a stream of telemetry data from... the already flooded Mir station. All station instruments were still operating normally.

The Germans also expressed surprise at the French. Ours seemed to have figured out the reasons and the flow of positive data from the Mir station stopped. The control center explained this curiosity as the tricks of hackers. Everything had calmed down, but then signals from the Mir station began to arrive again)))

There was an abundance of technical data about the operating parameters of the manned station and its equipment, megabytes of measurement data poured in, this time only one thing changed - now the signal was not encrypted and was broadcast completely openly to the entire network. However, this did not last long - after a couple of hours the station fell silent, now probably forever.

According to some reports, we were simply tired of the eternal requests for the status of the station and a random generator of telemetric information was created, which worked properly for several years, pleasantly massaging the brains of European sponsors who remotely participated in many experiments at the Mir station in the "Mir" mode. Russian online", i.e. with a delay of five days.

After the station was flooded, prankster programmers delayed turning off this useless information and the streams of garbage data were studied very carefully and around the clock by the expert community of Europe, although already 6 days after the fall of the station its wreckage was put up for sale on the global auction eBay...

The programmer-creator of the program (Major Mikhail) was disciplined, but the worst thing for him was that he was thrown out of the queue to receive a well-deserved departmental apartment, which is sacred...

Having received such a “gift”, he published his message on the official MCC website explaining what was happening and, as confirmation, posted the source code of the generator itself, written in the then popular language “Turbo Pascal”. Thus the mystical riddle was resolved.

The Mir station was sunk in the Pacific Ocean on the night of March 23, 2001. An artist specializing in space themes, Andrei Sokolov, Soviet era who painted pictures about how “Apple trees will bloom on Mars”, after the sinking of the “Mir”, he painted the picture that we see. The artist called it “Murder”.

Info and photos (C) various places on the Internet...