Soviet Union launches Mir space station core
On this day · 20 February 1986
The first piece of a station whose name means "peace" reached orbit, seeding a decade of unbroken human presence in space.
On February 20, 1986, the Soviet Union lifted the base block of the Mir space station into orbit atop a heavy Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (Liftoff fell late on February 19 in UTC, but on the 20th by Moscow time.) The roughly 45,000-pound module carried the living quarters, life support, and command systems for everything that would follow.
Its forward docking hub, with six ports, was designed to grow: over the next decade the Soviets and then Russians bolted on five research modules, two carrying U.S. science gear, expanding Mir into a sprawling orbital complex.
Mir means “peace” — and “world.”
The first crew arrived weeks later, in March 1986. From 1989 to 1999, Mir sustained a continuous human presence — a record not matched aboard the International Space Station until 2010. Across its 15-year life it hosted 125 people from 12 countries before its controlled deorbit in 2001.
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