The Mir space station

[bilko2]

Just watching a program on freeview related to it now. Fascinating stuff.
Does anyone know how big it is yet?
Apparently when it is finished it will be visible to the naked eye from earth.
Are there cosmonauts ( whats the difference ? ) living in it indefinately?
Can i see it with a home telescope?
When does it next pass London?
So many questions

[nervous]

do you mean the International Space Station? mir has been around a while hasnt it? i actually know a few russian cosmonauts from work, and the son of one of them is commander on ISS right now.

[up-the-dubs]

MIR was shut down/decomissioned a few years ago and pushed into the atmosphere to burn up.

bilko2 said:

Just watching a program on freeview related to it now. Fascinating stuff.

You just gotta hate repeats

[anonymous-user]

ISS is getting bigger. Mir went the other way some time ago.

[bilko2]

Oh!
Maybe it is the international one then. I had no idea that Mir was no more.

[bilko2]

up-the-dubs said:

MIR was shut down/decomissioned a few years ago and pushed into the atmosphere to burn up. bilko2 said: Just watching a program on freeview related to it now. Fascinating stuff. You just gotta hate repeats

[MGBGT]

Poor old Mir burned up on 'ablative re-entry' on the 23rd March 2001 and was an old friend to me on many late-night / early-morning astronomical observation sessions. I once met Helen Sharman, who spent a week on MIR and described the experience in terms of 'Blue Peter engineering'. The thing was literally held together with BluTack and Kit Kat foil.

The ISS is visible to the naked eye as a bright white object (MIR was yellow) travelling west-to-east a couple of times each night.
The finished station will be large enough to assemble and launch the next Lunar manned mission (about 2010) and the first manned Mars mission (about 2021).

Go to http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/ for more details on the missions and some absolutely awesome images and videos.

Enjoy!

[robdickinson]

Problem is ISS was designed to be built (for the most part) with shuttle bay sized/delivered parts.

Shutttle problems have hit that project as much as budjet problems.

[Zad]

Not only that, but Bush Jnr has decreed that NASA is to spend it's money on returning to the Moon and then going on to Mars. The ISS / Spacestation Alpha / Freedom is in *totally* the wrong orbit to be a stopping off place from the Earth to the Moon. On the plus side, the only thing the shuttle is allowed to do is to go to/from the ISS, as the ISS has habitation facilities should the Shuttle's tiles fail on take-off. Whether they will add much more to the ISS is still a very moot point.

With a decent telescope, it's possible to make out a pretty good amount of detail on the ISS as it orbits by. A quick Google gave: www.astrospider.com/iss.htm

ISS still carries amateur radio equipment and the inhabitants do talk to schools etc from time to time.

Mike

[ferg]

MGBGT said:

The thing was literally held together with BluTack and Kit Kat foil.

Then Kit Kat stopped using the foil and Mir became unrepairable..?

[tonyvid]

ISS is a really bright object - www.heavens-above.com - look here for passes at your location and also Iridium flares can be pretty impressive if you get a bright one.

[Eric Mc]

As already said. Mir re-entered the atmosphere and burned up in 2001. Mir was the last in a long line of Soviet space stations that had begun with the ill-fated Salyut 1 back in 1971.