March 23, 1996, the Shuttle Atlantis made a docking with the space station “Mir” with the purpose of delivering American female astronaut Shannon Lucifer (Shannon Lucidfor). On this day she returned to work at the station after four months of absence and set a record for women to the number of missions in space. This flight was the fifth and lasted 188 days, which also became a record. But if the high number of missions so far no one has surpassed the record for length of stay only stayed until 2007.
Shannon Lucifer on the space station “Mir”
It should be noted that during the delivery Usedfor on the space station Atlantis made its sixteenth flight and the seventy-sixth flight under program Space Shuttle. This program was stopped NASA in 2011, as you know, and the records for the duration of stay of women in space were twice beaten. So in 2007, the American Sunita Willas stayed in orbit for almost 195 days, and in 2015, her Italian colleague Samantha Cristoforetti set a new record of 199 days on the ISS.
On this day in 2001, the Mir station was sunk in the Pacific ocean. The official reason for this decision was the development of the resource, the strong depreciation of parts and components, as well as the lack of funding. When you create a station it was supposed to remain in orbit for 5 years, but in fact it has been used successfully three times longer. At the time of the decision to eliminate the station her condition was described as catastrophic: the Board denied the radio, occasionally fouled heat transfer fluids.
Space station Mir in orbit
Until 23 March 2001, no state in the world had no experience on the descent from orbit and flooding of orbital complexes. For descent “the World” into orbit was delivered to the ship “Progress M1-5” with increased fuel capacity. At 2:20 Moscow time the station went on predspuskovuyu orbit, and then “Progress” consistently gave a braking effect. Last load at 8:08, and after 36 minutes the station “Mir” entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, caught fire and began to disintegrate. At approximately 9:00 remaining part of the station sank in the Pacific ocean. Together with the station was flooded all were on it equipment, as well as three Christmas trees, Santa Claus suit and an electric guitar and a large library of books – all had been abandoned by expeditions to the station.