Mankind learned a lot from Mir about how to live and work in space. Mir doesn't work very well after so much wear and tear, and its orbit is failing. It has been replaced by the new International Space Station, where the USA, Russia and more than a dozen other countries work together. So Russia has decided to bring Mir down into the ocean in a controlled re-entry so its pieces won't hit places where people live. But among scientists who keep a check on what's flying around near planet Earth, a 135-ton object zooming in from space is not so unusual.
Military satellites record the flashes of their explosions in the upper atmosphere.
Scientists later found some small meteorites on the ice of a nearby lake, but none larger than a few hundred grams. But Mir will never make it that close to the ground, he says. The atmosphere is very good protection, and it breaks up meteorites and other space objects well before they can hit the Earth. In fact, if Mir were an asteroid, it wouldn't even be called a hazard. Compared to real trouble-makers from space, Mir is simply too small.