The Mir space station was launched by the Russians in February, 1986. For 15 years, Mir had been the only space station in orbit around Earth. Mir is a Russian word that means both "peace" and "world". Mir was assembled gradually, eventually measuring 96 by 86 feet. It grew into the shape of a dragonfly, and weighed 143 tons. It had many laboratories and living quarters. Many important "space firsts" occurred aboard the Mir space station.

Mir had been host to over 100 people from 15 different countries. It served as a laboratory for more than 17,000 scientific experiments. The first living thing born in orbit was a bird hatched aboard the Mir.

The record for the longest stay in orbit was set aboard the Mir by a Russian cosmonaut. He lived for over a year in space. The longest American in space was Shannon Lucid, who spent 6 months in space. Mir had its share of catastrophes too. It survived fires, collisions, equipment failures, and even the collapse of the government that owned it.

Mir ended its journey on Friday, March 23, 2001. It was the largest and heaviest piece of space junk to be returned to Earth. Its size and shape made it difficult to predict the exact entry. Mir disintegrated into many burning scraps of metal that rained over a designated area of the "space graveyard". It’s an area in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and Chile where Russia crashes abandoned spacecraft and satellites. Four large fragments flashed like white fireballs with a swarm of debris in their wake, and could be seen clearly from the island of Fiji. Four thunderous sonic booms shook the island about three minutes later.