Mir Space Station

Mir ("Peace" or "World") was a Soviet/Russian space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. It was the first modular space station, assembled in orbit over a decade from a series of modules launched individually and docked together. At its peak, Mir consisted of seven pressurised modules with a total mass of 129.7 tonnes and approximately 350 m³ of habitable volume.

Mir held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space (3,644 days) until it was surpassed by the ISS in 2010. The station hosted 104 cosmonauts and astronauts from 12 countries. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov spent a continuous 437 days aboard Mir (1994–1995), a single-mission endurance record that still stands.

In its later years, Mir became the centrepiece of the Shuttle-Mir programme (1995–1998), in which seven American astronauts lived aboard the station and nine Space Shuttle missions docked with Mir. This partnership was a critical precursor to the ISS, teaching both NASA and Roscosmos how to manage a jointly operated orbital facility. Mir was deliberately deorbited on 23 March 2001, with its debris landing in the South Pacific.