News The ISS has beaten a record previously held by the Mir

[SiberianTiger]

ISS sets record for constant manned spaceflight

MIR space station (RIA Novosti / Sergey Pyatakov)

Published 25 October, 2010, 21:59
Edited 26 October, 2010, 03:51

The ISS prepares to become the longest continuously-manned space station to orbit Earth on November 2 when it will mark its 10 year anniversary of having a constant human presence in orbit.

But cosmonauts and astronauts have been working on the ISS for longer than on the previous record-holding station – MIR – which was built by the Soviet Union.

MIR was launched at the very start of Perestroyka in 1986.

It hosted 28 long-term expeditions and clocked up 3641 days in zero-gravity, from September 8, 1989 through August 28, 1999.

Later, Russia joined the international team working on the ISS project.

But in the tough 1990s Moscow could not afford to maintain the two stations simultaneously.

So in 2001 Mir was de-orbited and sank into the Pacific Ocean after 15 years of constant work in space – a record the ISS has a long way to beat yet.

By that time, the ISS was already operating in space, having welcomed the first joint expedition of Roskosmos and NASA on November 2, 2000 when the first long-term expedition, consisting of cosmonauts Yury Gidzenko and Sergey Krikalev and astronaut William Shepherd, came to the ISS on a Soyuz TM-30 spacecraft.

The ISS was launched in 1998. Today there are 14 habitable and scientific modules in which the 25th expedition of three Russian cosmonauts and three American astronauts are working.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Cool, I wonder if they're gonna have some sort of celebration? (I don't know why but I do)

Darren

 

[SiberianTiger]

Cool, I wonder if they're gonna have some sort of celebration? (I don't know why but I do)

Darren

There's no such thing as too unimportant an occasion for raising a toast to!

 

[IronRain]

Hail Probe and ISS

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Well done, ISS!

This is what we can accomplish when we work together in space!

 

[n122vu]

Congrats to the ISS and all the space agencies involved! Well done!

By the way, does anyone know if Robert Ballard has expressed any interest in finding the sunken remains of Mir?

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Congrats to the ISS and all the space agencies involved! Well done!

By the way, does anyone know if Robert Ballard has expressed any interest in finding the sunken remains of Mir?

I don't know but if they do find them, they're probably still on fire.:rofl:

Darren

 

[Cairan]

Am I the only one who finds that if the ISS was a student, it would be the one that changed majors 3 times, took 6 years to do his "multidisciplinary" B.Sc. while putting together credits here and there from previous attempts, and that if he's lucky, might actually finish his M.Sc. before Mom and Dad cut him off and he's left to commute to campus in a crowded Lada instead of the Dodge Ram he used to drive?

Cheers... but to what?

 

[orbitingpluto]

Am I the only one who finds that if the ISS was a student, it would be the one that changed majors 3 times, took 6 years to do his "multidisciplinary" B.Sc. while putting together credits here and there from previous attempts, and that if he's lucky, might actually finish his M.Sc. before Mom and Dad cut him off and he's left to commute to campus in a crowded Lada instead of the Dodge Ram he used to drive?

Cheers... but to what?

It is cheers to surviving this long. Just BTW, astronauts/cosmonauts for the most part have used the 'crowded Lada' to get to and from the ISS, with the shuttle acting as a moving van full of friends to put the place together. I thought this was common knowledge, but I might be incorrect.

 

[dougkeenan]

Any excuse to drink tonight.

 

[JonnyBGoode]

Let's hope they don't find out about that Nigerian guy...