February 20, 2017
Categories: History, Russia, Science, Space

On February 20, 1986, 31 years ago the first module of Mir space station was orbited by Proton booster. It was a breakthrough for Soviet manned cosmonautics and orbital program and a milestone for world space exploration.
The station had been operating for 15 years instead of 5 years initially planned and was a home for cosmonauts and astronauts from 12 countries. 104 cosmonauts and astronauts visited Mir though initially it was designed as a soviet national project. For the years of its operation 25 international manned programs had been successfully completed. The first foreign astronaut working onboard Mir was from Syria, as for the US there were even more Americans who had visited the station than Russians.
Orbital complex consisted of 6 modules, the total mass of the station amounted to 140 tons. More than 11 tons of scientific equipment were deployed aboard Mir and more than 23 thousand experiments and studies conducted. For station maintenance and upgrade the cosmonauts performed 78 spacewalks.
“For me Mir orbital station was the first and most complex object I controlled from Mission Control centre. It has been always associated with an enormous extraterrestrial home not only for those crews working onboard but either for the whole mankind. For me personally at that time it was an inconceivable creation of a human genius, a dream I’ve been always aspired to”, – Hero of the Russian Federation, pilot cosmonaut Andrei Borisenko who is currently working onboard the ISS says.
In the course of Mir space project implementation our country gained unique scientific and technical experience in the field of long-duration spaceflights.

More from this category:
October 13, 2014

Roscosmos developed deep space and particularly Moon exploration program, – Roscosmos strategic planning office Director Yuri Makarov reported last Friday. “In terms of technologies we…

full story
May 5, 2016

Second stage of ExoMars project implementation was shifted from 2018 to July 2020, – Roscosmos press office reports. According to Roscosmos the second ExoMars mission…

full story
February 9, 2022

At the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Progress MS-19 cargo spacecraft preflight preparation continues for launch under the 80th resupply mission to the International Space Station. On…

full story
April 30, 2015

At 10:09:50, Moscow time, April 28, 2015, Progress M-27M cargo vehicle was launched by Soyuz-2.1a booster from Baikonur spaceport. The launch and the flight were…

full story
February 26, 2019

On the night of Tuesday, February 26, the train with the “Proton-M” launch vehicle, the head fairing and the upper stage DM-03, was sent from…

full story
July 8, 2024

Testing of RD-191M finalisation engines has been successfully completed at NPO Energomash’s research and test facility. The single-chamber liquid-propellant engine is designed for the Angara-A5M…

full story
June 10, 2015

Unexpected Soyuz TMA-15M thrusters igniting still has not affected the date of Soyuz landing. The crew comprising Anton Shkaplerov (Roscosmos), Samantha Christoforetti (ESA) and Terry…

full story
January 24, 2020

The Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolay Tikhonov and Andrey Babkin successfully passed the test according to the program of scientific and applied research and experiments on simulators…

full story