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Moscow (Interfax) Feb. 19, 2001 There is a very high chance that the Mir space station could hit a city if it makes an uncontrolled descent to Earth, the head of the Russian Aerospace Agency said Monday in defense of the government's plans to deorbit the station and sink it in the Pacific Ocean. If the station were to make an uncontrolled descent it could fall to Earth anywhere between 52 degrees North latitude and 52 degrees South latitude, a band with many major population centers, Yuri Koptev said at a news conference. Continuing to operate Mir would be pointless because many of the station's onboard systems have come to the end of their service life and the metal of the station's body needs to undergo a detailed structural analysis in a laboratory, Koptev said. He said specialists at Russia's mission control are concerned that unsanctioned commands periodically arise in the system of the central onboard computer that affect the station's engines and control systems. This could affect the safety of Mir's flight and lead to unpredictable consequences, Koptev said. In the controlled descent planned for Mir, fragments of the station that do not burn up in dense layers of the atmosphere would fall within an area of the Pacific Ocean that is 200 km wide and 5,000 to 6,000 km long. Russia must end the operation of the 15-year old station with honor, Koptev said. "This is an invaluable experience in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS)," he added. Meanwhile, Russian Aerospace Agency boss Yuri Koptev said on Monday, that Mir will be deorbited and sunk in the Pacific Ocean between March 13 and 17. The exact date for when Mir will be sunk will be determined by trajectory experts at the end of February, Koptev told reporters. Mir is expected to reach the critical altitude, when mission control will have to intervene to make sure the station crashes in a safe area of the Pacific, on March 8, Koptev said, citing preliminary calculations. The date on which the station will be sunk depends directly on solar activity, because after solar flares the Earth's atmosphere acts as more of a brake on the station. Koptev recalled that Mir's predecessor, the Salyut-7, made an uncontrolled descent to Earth because it had almost no rocket fuel left on board when it was decommissioned. The situation with Mir is different, and the task of mission control is to control the station's descent until the end, he said. Mir is currently orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 279 kilometers, Koptev said.
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ISS Astronauts Need To Be Versatile
Paris (ESA) Feb. 19, 2001Although working in space is still not routine, it is far more frequent than it once was. One reason being the construction of the International Space Station by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 10 ESA Member States.
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