The name mir means peace or world the space station was operated in low earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. The station was firstly operated by Soviet Union and after the collapse of USSR in 1991 the station was operated by Russia It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft. At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir's orbit decayed. The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and spacecraft systems with a goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space.
The mass was about 129,700 kg and it have almost 19m width and 31m length and a 27.5m height
It orbited our planet on an orbit about 354 to 374km and in an orbital velocity of 7.7km/sec totally it held 5510 days in earth
The module had a docking port at each end and four ports sited radially at its forward end. On March 13, 1986, cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov were sent aloft aboard a Soyuz T spacecraft to rendezvous with Mir and become its first occupants. Between March 1987 and April 1996, five expansion modules were added to the core unit—Kvant 1 (1987), an astrophysics observatory; Kvant 2 (1989), containing supplementary life-support equipment and a large airlock; Kristall (1990), a materials-sciences laboratory; and Spektr (1995) and Priroda (1996), two science modules containing remote-sensing instruments for ecological and environmental studies of Earth. With the exception of its first occupants, Mir’s cosmonaut crews traveled between the station and Earth in upgraded Soyuz TM spacecraft, and supplies were transported by robotic Progress cargo ferries.
Mir supported human habitation from March 14, 1986, to June 15, 2000, which included an uninterrupted stretch of occupancy of almost 10 years. It hosted more than 100 people from 12 countries, including a series of U.S. astronauts in 1995–98 as part of a Mir–space shuttle cooperative endeavour. Between January 1994 and March 1995, Mir cosmonaut-physician Valery Polyakov set an endurance record of 438 continuous days in space, longer than the approximately nine months estimated for a crewed voyage to the planet Mars.
Designed for only a five-year life, the aging Mir suffered a series of equipment failures and accidents in 1996–97 but remained in service. On March 23, 2001, the abandoned Mir made a controlled reentry, with the surviving pieces falling into the Pacific Ocean.
Kvant 1, an astrophysics module that accomodates instruments from several countries, was launched 3/31/87 and docked to the core module in April 1987. It is about 5.8 m long, has a maximum diameter of 4.15 m, and a mass of about 11 tons.
Kvant 2, housing scientific and technological experiment equipment, a shower facility, and an airlock supporting extravehicular activities (EVA) by the crew, docked to the station in December 1989. It has a mass of 19.5 tons, a length of 11.9 m, and a maximum diameter of 4.35 m.
The Kristall module joined the station in June 1990. It is mainly dedicated to technological research, such as semiconductor and biological experiments. It also houses Earth-observation instruments. Its mass and dimensions are similar to those of Kvant-2.
In August 1992, a thruster package, known as "Sofora", was installed on a 14 m mast mounted on top of the Kvant module. These thrusters allow efficient and propellant-saving attitude control of the station.
Spektr, a 23.5 ton Russian module, joined Mir in May 1995. It carries a Belgian grating spectrometer MIRAS that will monitor atmospheric gases such as ozone, carbon dioxide, freon and sulfur. It also carried some American equipment to implement the Mir-Shuttle rendezvous scheduled for late 1995.
SO (Stikovchnoy Otsek) was a docking module, which allowed a greater clearance between the Mir station and the Shuttle to avoid moving the Kristall module to an axial position for each docking. It was delivered in November 1995.
The Priroda module joined Mir in April 1996. It is mainly dedicated to Earth-observation tasks such as ocean surface-temperature measurement and studies of ocean/atmosphere interactions. It was the aim of the project to provide the full variety of existing remote sensing technology using instruments in almost all usable wavelength ranges as well as active and passive sounding methods. So the Priroda module carries optical and infrared scanners, an imaging spectrometer, a LIDAR, scanning and pointing microwave radiometers, synthetic aperture radar and high resolution digital (stereo) cameras.
For more details refer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir
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