Top ten spacecraft

7. Mir
Living in space is the dream of every dorky child from San Diego to Ipswich, and it's a dream that doesn't die when you reach adulthood.

As much as the ISS is the space station for now, it wasn't the first and we think Mir needs to be credited because it was remarkable for so many reasons. Firstly, it was constructed over a period of ten years, starting with the core module, and then bolting new bits on the side.

Mir also holds the record for the continuous manned presence in space, just a few days short of ten years. Between 5 September 1989 and 28 August 1999 there were always people on board the station -- much of the junk in space is their daily garbage. It travelled 3.6 billion kilometres in its lifetime.

At the end of its life there were plans to exploit Mir for space tourism, and run it like a hotel for the mega-rich in orbit. It proved too expensive to fix all the problems with ageing components, however, and on 23 March 2001 the 124-tonne space station was de-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere.

Photo credit: NASA

• Previous
• Continue

• Share:
• 
• 
• 

• Tags:
• NASA,
• Shuttle,
• Pioneer,
• US,
• Christmas