“Drowned in the ocean, like the unfortunate Mumu in the river”: Is the Mir station the pride of Russian cosmonautics or a heavy burden that had to be got rid of? Five reasons why the Mir space station was flooded The flooded Mir station

Exactly 19 years ago, in 1998, the joint program between Russia and the United States "Mir" - "Shuttle" ended, under which Russian cosmonauts were delivered to Mir by shuttles, and astronauts were given the right to work at the station and conduct various kinds of experiments.

Three years later, on the night of March 23, the orbital station was deorbited and sunk in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. 16 years have passed since then, but even today the disputes about whether the decision was made to terminate the service do not fade away. “pride of national cosmonautics” correct. We offer to remember what kind of station it was, and try to figure out why it was decided to flood it.

The development of the Mir station began in 1976 at the OKB-1 design bureau (today RSC Energia), and, according to the plan, the project was supposed to be completed in three years. However, due to technical, financial and political reasons, the construction of the orbital home stretched out for 10 years. As a result, the station was assembled when the estimated period of its operation was already significantly exceeded.

In terms of its appearance and dimensions, the new complex resembled its predecessors, the Salyuts, but there were still some differences.

Firstly, the Mir was equipped with a docking system with six nodes, which was completely revolutionary for that time - instead of the usual Igla system, which for a long time (and often unsuccessfully) ensured the docking of the Soyuz with the Salyut, they installed the Kurs system. New technology for 15 years has helped all expeditions to reach their destination without any problems.

Secondly, the main element of the complex - the base unit - was designed in such a way that the station, even as part of this element alone, could perform all the necessary functions and ensure a long stay of the crew on board. Cabins for astronauts were placed inside the block, a compartment where the crew could observe personal hygiene, exercise bikes, instruments for measuring body weight, hatches for moving to another module, an airlock for dumping debris, and, of course, a central control post.

In 1986, the base unit was launched into orbit, and over the next ten years, 5 modules were attached to it: Kvant (1987), Kvant-2 (1989), Kristall (1990) , “Spectrum” (1995), “Nature” (1996) with instruments for observing the atmosphere and the earth's surface.

I must say, the complex turned out to be overall: its weight with all the modules was 140 tons, which made Mir the largest space object. The orbital house, built back in the USSR, became the world's first modular space station, as well as the only air laboratory in the world, inside which it was possible to carry out observations and experiments necessary to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.

Over a fifteen-year history, about a hundred cosmonauts from twelve countries of the world have visited Mir, more than 20,000 experiments have been carried out, about 80 spacewalks have been performed, and about 100 Progress and Soyuz spacecraft have docked. But also during this time, thousands of malfunctions and malfunctions were recorded at the station.

The orbital complex completed its journey at the beginning of the 21st century, having worked three times more than the established period. In 2001, the Russian leadership decided to flood the station in the South Pacific.

Why was Mir station flooded?

On March 23, 2001 Mir was deorbited. Most of the complex burned down upon entry into the atmosphere, a little more than 1000 fragments of some modules were able to reach the earth: debris from a passenger car fell in the South Pacific Ocean, in an area closed to navigation (this place is known as the “spaceship graveyard”).

In parallel with the development of the first station of the modular type "Mir", it was planned to develop another station, "Mir-2", which in 1995 should have replaced its predecessor. However, the project of the fourth generation station was not implemented due to financial difficulties. Russian specialists managed to build only the Zvezda base block for the new complex. Instead of creating Mir-2, Russia turned its attention to the future ISS, turning the Zvezda base unit into a service module for its segment, which was cheaper than building a whole new station. The authorities decided to postpone the destruction of Mir, whose service life had expired by 1995, until the US financed the station. There was an agreement between the Russian Federation and America: in exchange for financial support, American astronauts were given access to the space station, where they could gain vast experience in space, as well as work out some technologies for the future ISS.

In 1998, the United States ceased to provide assistance in supporting the complex due to political differences with our state, and Russia simply could not pull Mir (the orbital complex cost the government $ 200 million a year). In mid-1999, the leadership of the Russian space industry decided to transfer the station to an autonomous mode, mothball it and flood it in the Pacific Ocean two years later.

Could the orbital complex have been saved?

“The Mir orbital complex was conceived as a new step in space exploration. Like a city constantly growing with modules”, - in one of his interviews, Oleg Baklanov, the ex-minister of the rocket and space industry of the USSR, the "father" of Mir, said.

According to some scientists, the Mir station could have been saved. After all, it initially provided for the possibility of replacing modules. It was necessary to build new modules with modern equipment and replace the old ones with them. And in the late 90s, a group of Russian designers proposed a unique technology - electromagnetic engines, which could, due to constant interaction with the Earth's magnetic field, keep the station in orbit for a long time.

It was also possible to sell the station to Iran, but the Russian government refused this idea, as it considered that Iran would use the complex for military purposes. In 2000, Rosaviakosmos entered into an agreement with the private company MirCorp, according to which Mir could be used for commercial purposes. The corporation spent a little more than $40 million on servicing the station. With these funds, the Soyuz TM-30 spacecraft with the expedition and two cargo ships for scientific research were able to fly to the complex. Cooperation between the state and a private company could continue further, because it was even planned to send tourists to Mir, but the authorities doubted MirCorp's ability to continue financing the project, and negotiations were curtailed.

Cosmonaut Georgy Grechko once admitted that the Mir station could not be written off. The complex was constantly updated, repaired and put in order. According to the cosmonaut, the station could work normally for at least another three years, although crew members were increasingly engaged on board the station not in scientific research, but in repair work. Gerogy Grechko in an interview with “Interlocutor” compared the “Mir” with an ordinary car, which is guaranteed for two years - “and after a good repair, the car will be running for much longer than two years”.

What would happen to our cosmonautics if not for the liquidation of the Soviet, and then the Russian modular complex? Perhaps we would bring it to perfection and put on board such scientific experiments that would advance us far in understanding the Universe.

Can we say that the sinking of the Mir station in the Pacific Ocean is a technical rollback? With the destruction of the orbital complex, Russia left its leading positions in astronautics and handed them over to other countries that are slowly but surely implementing their space programs, setting ambitious goals and gradually achieving them. From a once mighty space power, our country has turned into a kind of "cabman", providing services for the delivery into space. Where will this path lead us?

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Probably everyone remembers the pride of the Russian cosmonautics of the 90s - the Mir orbital station, which for some reason had to be hastily flooded in 2001, exactly 17 years ago, in the bottomless abysses of the Pacific Ocean. But our story is not about the exploits and achievements of the late USSR, but about interesting and courageous people who stood behind this titanic work and accomplishments and, in the unknown, ensured the work of this gigantic contraption, floating in weightlessness.

And the best thing about this period in the history of the former USSR is the instructive story of the military programmer Mikhail, who had the rank of major, but one day rebelled against the entire system.

Let's tell this story from the beginning.

Pride of the domestic space industry

Before the flight to the orbital complex "Mir" of the French cosmonaut, the European Space Agency (ESA) closely monitored the operation of the equipment of the Russian space complex "Mir" as never before. And even then, ESA was, to put it mildly, shocked - one station failure was replaced by another, and the French did not understand at all how “all this” could be controlled remotely from Earth.

Actually, all the daily work of the then shift that accompanied the Mir was reduced to an unquenchable struggle with the failure of something, after which the next refusal of something else immediately followed - and this routine already bore some kind of routine stamp for the Russian employees of the MCC .

It must be admitted that even then the "Mir" was breathing its last ... But people went to work, sent expeditions, and the essence of all their activity behind pathos speeches and official plans, as a rule, came down to only one thing - to stretch at least a little more, to ensure survivability rapidly aging station for another month, six months, and so on.

Raising the telemetry channel

Wishing to save the delicate nerves of the French, and along the way, the far from iron nerves of the partners who continued to generously pay for their scientific programs aboard the Mir, the MCC made a wise decision to install a special web server from which from now and forever to start broadcasting to the abyss of the global network Internet real-time all telemetry data on the current state of the station.

Secure access to this broadcast has been made available to all European partners and ESA Space Centers. This solved two problems at once.

Since then, everything has been relatively good - a lot of European (and not only) astronauts flew to the Mir, and everything would have remained fine further ... but these mysterious Russians somehow suddenly decided to flood their station.

Well, the Europeans accepted this partly with understanding: if the equipment has expired, then the further operation of the station is really impossible and dangerous, even if it (the equipment) works, according to the data it receives, quite reliably and regularly ...

underground knock

In the photo: Soyuz TM-24 docked to the transfer compartment of the Mir orbital station.

But that was only the necessary introduction, and now the story itself. And this whole story, unpleasant for our programmer Mikhail, began immediately from the moment of the rapid fall of the Mir station into the Pacific Ocean.

After the flooding, the European Space Agency, which remotely and around the clock monitored the work of the Russian space station, expressed its bewilderment at the ongoing broadcast of the telemetry data stream from ... the board of the Mir station. Technically, it looked as if all the station's instruments, as usual, were operating normally.

Then the Germans joined the French - they were quite surprised when they rewound the chronology of the events and found that when entering the dense layers of the atmosphere, the temperature and pressure inside the Mir station did not change at all. Okay, they decided - at first everyone attributed what was happening to the delay of packets in the network and the overall latency of the signal, which was first received from the station by Russia and only then retransmitted to the network.

But the further, the more difficult it was to explain what was happening with a network delay - telemetry data, from which it followed that everything was normal at the station, continued to arrive even when the tourists were already collecting debris in the fall area with might and main.

As you know, six days after the fall of the station, its wreckage was already put up for sale at the eBay world auction, and at that very time, foreign experts quietly went crazy from the data received from the Mir - despite slight pressure fluctuations, all it was within the normal range, except that the radiation was a little more than usual, but the light sensors just showed that the station had entered the part of space illuminated by the sun ... In short, the normal space everyday life of an ordinary space station continued further.

On the seventh day, unable to stand it, the Europeans sent a request to the Russian side through the RCA to clarify what was happening. The Russians courteously and succinctly reassured their foreign counterparts by declaring that they would "absolutely take action," after which the telemetry stream abruptly stopped.

After thinking for two more days, the Germans decided to write another request, in which they asked to explain in more detail what was the reason for such an incident. Again, a vague message quickly came from Moscow that “these are all hacker tricks,” but thanks for the concern, colleagues, we managed on our own, the danger is already behind us.

The intrigue is gaining momentum

At first, the Germans thought for a long time about the answer and even began to calm down somehow, but the signal from the Mir station ... resumed again! Again, all the abundance of technical data about the operation parameters of the manned station and its equipment went, megabytes of measurement data rained down, this time only one thing changed - now the signal was not encrypted and was completely open to the entire network, that is, anyone without any password could connect and receive information ... from the board of the Soviet-Russian space station that was flooded a week ago.

And here the Europeans are already somehow quite worried. At the same time, an unusual message appeared on the central web server of the MCC, where an unknown programmer, Major Mikhail, in pure Russian, among a pile of English-language materials and press releases, fires his manual and, in particular, explains the essence of what is happening between the lines.

However, his message did not last long - after a couple of hours this mysterious page with a message to the "international community" disappeared forever from the Roscosmos website.

The clue to the telemetric phenomenon

In the photo: a model of the Mir orbital station in the State Polytechnical Museum.

It turned out that when the Europeans became very interested in their Russian colleagues about a series of failures of their equipment and chronic malfunctions at the Mir station, which, as it were, called into question the continuity of funding for a number of foreign scientific programs and joint projects, the Russians, without thinking twice, wrote a program , which randomly generated all telemetry data from the station, fully emulating its operation, and at the same time, the range of fluctuations of all parameters did not go beyond the permissible and reasonable.

In fact, the Mir station was literally dying, long and painful, and the manned expeditions sent there repeatedly saved it from yet another paralysis - according to some unofficial evidence, this took the lion's share of the time of each crew. And when, nevertheless, a historic and official decision was made on its flooding, the situation had already gone so far that in the bright future of Russian cosmonautics there was clearly a direct danger that the Mir would literally fall apart, and it was deadly dangerous to delay its flooding .

Once again it is worth recalling that against this background of daily heroic and tragic struggle Russian people for the visibility of the operation of its space station, a continuous traffic of ideal telemetry data on the state of the station regularly flowed to the West, which made it possible to regularly earn extra money as a great space power in a variety of joint scientific projects.

In the photo: a 1990 USSR postage stamp depicting the Mir station.

After the sudden flooding of the station behind a heap of important events, the flight control somehow completely forgot about this telemetry generator, the junk data streams from which were still very carefully and around the clock studied expert community Europe.

Two days later, after an official request from Europe, the generator was found along with its programmer, and then safely turned off. But as promised to European colleagues, "appropriate measures" were taken - in this case in relation to the programmer who overlooked "this case".

In reality, this was expressed in the fact that the programmer - the creator of the program was disciplined, but the worst thing for him was that he was thrown out of the queue for receiving a departmental apartment, for the sake of which, in fact, he steadfastly endured "all the hardships of army life."

Having received such a gift from the enraged management, a couple of days later he personally published his message on the official website of the MCC with an explanation of what was happening and, in confirmation, posted the source codes of the generator itself, written, by the way, in the language popular at that time "Turbo Pascal".

This revenge was just awful in strength. A powerful blow was dealt to the reputation of Roskosmos: pedantic European scientists, who for years delved into tons of numbers generated over the years by a prolific domestic nonsense generator, and built their most complex models based on the behavior of a distant and mysterious Russian station, were simply shocked by such ... unscrupulousness on the part of the world's leading aerospace power.

In the photo: the flight path of the station and the place of flooding.

Unfortunately, it is not known what happened in the end to that brave programmer major who dared to tell the world the truth. The ITAR-TASS journalists who investigated this incident say that in response to what happened, whole waves of repression swept through the department where the poor programmer worked.

In the photo: the emblem of the orbital station "Mir".

Already, the military does not let anyone get away with such arbitrariness of their subordinates: and, since a few young people fled, resigning in unison "of their own free will", several hundred remaining military personnel of the Yu.A. Gagarin, it was stated that the size of their current or future pensions would be revised downward. This was especially true for the employees of the Department of Military Applied Themes, where the brave programmer who rebelled against the system worked.

About the destruction of the basis of modern state defense - its space stronghold. Without a powerful space base, there can be no powerful state, and the concept of developing the latest weapons, and the modern doctrine of warfare - everything is based on space. But everything that has been achieved by us since 1957 in space, from the world's first domestic artificial satellite of the Earth, all this has been destroyed to the root, meaningfully and mercilessly destroyed.

One of the most tragic dates in recent history Russia, another rainy day Russian calendar- March 22, 2001, on this day at 8 hours 59 minutes 24 seconds Moscow time, the Russian orbital station "Mir" was killed.
Entering the dense layers of the atmosphere, Mir did not completely burn out, several large fragments with a total weight of 20 to 40 tons fell off its 136-ton mass and fell directly into the hands of the Americans.

In the flood zone, which was previously indicated to the American side, there were as many as 27 "fishing" ships.
For safety reasons, their captains were asked to leave the area dangerous for navigation, but they refused, citing the successful "fishing for tuna".
When Foreign Minister of New Zealand Phill Goff spoke about this strange fishing at a meeting of the New Zealand Parliament, the deputies smirked knowingly.
Any islander knows that at this time of the year fishing near the Fiji archipelago is like throwing nets into the city sewer ...

The “fishing” boats in the square of the descent of the “Mir” were positioned so that there was not a mile left that was not covered by them.
In the role of "tuna" - space trophies with unique information about the state of various materials after many years of being in outer space - there is no such information and no one else will have it for a long time.
Russian cosmonauts assessed the liquidation of Mir as a betrayal of Russia.
Putin, Kasyanov, Klov and Koptev were called "Ku Klux Klansmen who lynched Mir" in Star City.

Everyone is convinced that the decision to build the orbital center was made under pressure from the United States.
The Americans carefully monitored the descent of the Mir, - information from the Russian Mission Control Center was directly transmitted to NASA - they made accurate telemetric "notches" of the entire trajectory of the descent of the station, the fall of its parts, and, of course, calculated our super-secret control scheme for high-precision ballistic missiles .
What the spies had unsuccessfully hunted for decades, literally fell right into their hands.
No, it is no coincidence that two rocket officers who were on duty that rainy day at the Main Center of the Russian Military Space Forces became so ill with their hearts that they had to call an ambulance ...

With the departure from space of the most unique and very expensive station "Mir" - 4.3 billion dollars were spent on its construction and operation - the universal space "gates" were practically slammed in front of Russia.
The death of "Mir" is the closure of specialized faculties in universities, the curtailment of applied research, because space, according to experts, is a research institute for many industries.
As Professor Eremeev put it, we not only splashed the Mir station into the ocean, but together with it we launched numerous military programs and unique scientific experiments to the bottom.
We have fallen from the pinnacle of scientific progress, and even substituted our own shoulder for the Americans so that they climb into our place.
We not only showed NASA the right path by passing all the key developments as a result of space longevity, but also undertook to provide financial and technical support for the American ISS project.

“The money that we spent on helping the United States in the development of their astronautics could ensure the effective performance of the Mir,” says Professor Eremeev.
But, before the remains of the Mir space station were overwhelmed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, all nine shafts of informational lies fell upon it, that the station was outdated and beyond repair, and frequent accidents on it could provoke an unauthorized deorbit ...
All lies! A well-thought-out, well-paid, treacherous lie.
The Mir station could not become obsolete in principle; it initially provided for the replacement of any module.
The most convincing evidence of the deliberate destruction of the Russian orbital station Mir is that the construction of the station was completed in 1996.
But, two years later, the Government, headed by Kiriyenko, decided to stop funding work at the station and complete its flight.
Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov allowed commercial banks to borrow money to, I quote, "civilize the flooding of the Mir station in June 1999."

According to Nikolai Zelenshchikov, First Deputy General Designer of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after S.
Korolev, "this is how one of the biggest troubles of Russia began - the destruction of high-tech industry."
In 1991, the Energiya-Buran system was withdrawn from the Federal Armaments Directorate, and, with the advent of the Yeltsin team to power, they stopped allocating money for it altogether, the reserve created was mothballed, although the second Buran was already fully assembled, they were finishing making the third ship with improved performance.
In varying degrees of readiness, there was a complete set for 8 Energia launch vehicles capable of launching up to 100 tons into space.

This is the result of Russian cosmic thought, will, labor, which until recently Russia was proud of, and which have been destroyed by the current Russian government.
In early April 1993, the United States unveiled the US Space Command's 2020 strategic plan with a clear goal:
"Providing the United States and its allies with free access to space and full-scale operations in it, while forbidding the enemy to solve such problems."

Based on this program, not only the Presidents of the United States act, but also the President and the Government of Russia.
By funding the Federal Space Program by only 27%, they are forcing the domestic space industry to work for foreign national interests.
Having no government order, NPO Energomash supplies its best RD-180 rocket engines in the world to the American Atlas launch vehicle.
Due to poverty, our cosmic grouping is degrading.
91 spacecraft remained in orbit, 70 of them out of warranty.
We have lost devices for fundamental space research, and if drastic measures are not taken, we will lose the space industry altogether, because there are only 12.6% of young specialists under the age of 30, 20% are pensioners, about 40% are aged 50 years and older .

The liquidation of the Mir space station dramatically undermined the prestige of working in the industry among student youth.
The situation is especially difficult in research centers.
The number of staff has been halved.
Work on key scientific and technical problems has been stopped.
The experimental base is in critical condition.
The share of equipment older than 20 years exceeds 60%.
Test benches - from 12 to 40 years old, there are even older ones.
More than 85% of the means of launching and controlling spacecraft operate beyond the technical resource.
Funds for technological re-equipment are not allocated ...

We quickly forgot the Dropshop plan, developed in the 1950s by the Pentagon, let me remind you: "A nuclear attack on the Soviet Union can lead to a decisive victory in just three to four weeks."
The Americans intended to strike with 300 atomic bombs dropped on 200 targets throughout our country.
It was the euphoria of impunity and permissiveness that swept the United States as soon as it received nuclear weapons.
And only our satellite, designed by Academician Tikhonravov, and showing the Americans that we have not only a reciprocal atomic bomb, but also a means of delivering it to the most hidden corners of America, sobered up the Americans, forced them to remove the Dropshop plan from their desktops.

But, who today gratefully remembers this date - October 4, 1957, 22 hours 48 minutes - who is proud of the triumph of our people, their scientific, economic power?
Who will remember Korolev, the creators of the famous "seven", the R-7 rocket, which became the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile - the basis of our nuclear shield?
"Seven" could deliver a nuclear charge anywhere in the world.
In terms of range, altitude and flight accuracy, it had no equal in the world.
This, despite the fact that not we, but the Americans in the last months of the war brought 492 German specialists from Germany, headed by General Walter Dornberger, head of the development of the V-2 rocket.
And Dr. Wernher von Braun ended up with the Americans, becoming the father of American astronautics.
And still, we Russians were the first and the best.
That's what sobered and then stopped the Americans from their victorious march on Russia.
But after all, the same euphoria of impunity and invincibility gripped the Americans today after our nuclear fist was unclenched.
Do we want to stop American impudence by kissing with Bush?
Rocket power then, slobbery kisses today?
We forget everything, we betray everything - heroes, glory, honor of Russia.

In 1953, Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich Malyshev, the Minister of Medium Machine Building, the "Nuclear" Minister, the "godfather" of the domestic hydrogen bomb, after testing the first hydrogen bomb, went straight to the epicenter of the explosion to verify the strength of the new weapon.
Four years later, he died of radiation sickness... This is how the Gorbachevs, Yeltsins, and Putins sell and betray...
Let us recall the grandiose construction site at the Tyuratam junction, lost in the sands of Kazakhstan: over 300 thousand military builders, up to a thousand wagons of arriving construction cargo per day!
The grandiose space launch complex was built in just 844 days!
He commanded a construction site comparable to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, Major General technical service Georgy Maksimovich Shubnikov.
Who remembers him now, who is proud of him? It’s good if the monument to him was not demolished in Leninsk ...

From the book Mysteries of Civilizations

Chapter 1. The Mystery of Mir Station

The fact that we still do not know much about the natural environment proves and amazing story that happened to cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov and his comrades. A story that ended with the sinking of the Mir space station. This story is still a carefully concealed secret of Russian cosmonautics.

…Hero Soviet Union Alexander Serebrov observed dozens of times the fall of celestial bodies directly in space from the window of the Mir orbital station. Behind him are four flights and ten spacewalks. But Serebrov could not even imagine that one flight would be fatal for him. Alexander remembers that expedition minute by minute... The cosmonauts of the Mir orbital station had just set foot on its board. The equipment left at the station was used by the crew of the previous shift. Including spacesuits. The flight engineer of the orbital station, Alexander Serebrov, was supposed to prepare the equipment for the spacewalk. When Serebrov opened one of the suits, a wave of green dust literally poured over him.

On Earth, dust settles, but in space, under conditions of weightlessness, it is elusive. Several layers of mold had formed inside the suit. All this the team had to clean up with improvised means. Mold and dust were collected and sent to the dust collector.

However, the story didn't end there. A few days later, the astronauts noticed that the water at the station had an unpleasant taste, and a week later a pungent smell appeared in the compartments.

Alexander Serebrov says:

“At the next session of communication with the Earth, we say: “Water with a smell, let us change the column.” We were not allowed. Then we began to pay attention to the fact that our condensate pumps stop every half an hour. The siren is buzzing, something stops there, and the air conditioner stops pumping.”

Then the astronauts dismantled the column and determined that the pump needed to be replaced. But this did not help, and soon Serebrov noticed that the entire column filter was clogged with poisonous yellow crumbs.

The granules of unknown origin were again shaken into the dust collector, they decided to sort it out on Earth, the crew was about to return home. But the flight was extended by two months. The astronauts had no choice but to fix the problems themselves. Then Serebrov decided to dismantle the column.

Alexander Serebrov continues his story:

“I opened the column, and there are also some pieces. Then I put a wire in there (even in space nothing can be done without delay) and began to pull out a worm with a length of one and a half meters. That is, the surface was covered with a millimeter layer of some incomprehensible fabric, it was flexible, yellow, with dark brown spots, like a snake ... "

The astronauts experienced the strongest shock from what they saw. How could this creature end up in an airtight orbital plumbing system? The team reported the incident to Mission Control. The expedition was urgently prepared to return to Earth. But the astronauts had little time. One microbacterium in space mutated so that it managed to be reborn into a whole slug. Under the influence of cosmic radiation, viruses began to slowly destroy the Mir station. One after another, the most important devices failed.

Here is what an employee of the Mission Control Center Novikova told me:

“At the Mir, a switching communication device failed. And when it was lowered to Earth, and when the casing of this device was removed, there was a very strong, thick mold coating on the insulation of the wires inside. Then, also on the ISS, we fixed the malfunction of certain instruments. In particular, the fire detector and the smoke detector failed.

Mir is a manned research orbital complex that operated in near-Earth space from February 20, 1986 to March 23, 2001

The astronauts were no longer in control of the situation. A fire could break out at Mir at any moment. Without a fire detector and a smoke detector, this situation could lead to disaster.

Alexander Serebrov sent his dangerous find on a cargo spacecraft to Earth. The crew had a few more days to spend in space. Already at the station, Serebrov felt unwell. Constantly dizzy, nauseous, for several days the astronaut lay with a temperature.

The fact that the Mir orbital station was almost completely covered in various types of fungi is not a secret. When looking at a photo of the station's hatch, extensive mold damage can be seen with the naked eye. Under such conditions, Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Serebrov and his team spent 197 days.

“I somehow climbed onto the spherical bottom,” says Serebrov, “this is the aft part of the module. She was all covered with some kind of white coating. This is not just aluminum oxide or something else ... I then took swabs, lowered them to Earth, but they don’t inform us so as not to frighten ... ”

The Mir station, all overgrown with space mushrooms, was flooded in the Pacific Ocean in 2001. Scientists assured: the station was heat-treated through the atmosphere. In such an oven, not a single microbe will survive. But they recognized that the properties of the mold mutating in weightlessness are unknown until the end. The station was flooded, but what if space bacteria survived? What is happening now at a depth where the remains of Mir are buried is unknown. Is there a threat that an unknown virus will come to earth from the water depths?

“They did wrong with Mir,” Serebrov is sure. - They flooded it in a hurry, without taking samples either inside or outside. But this radiation even affects the structure of the metal, radiation accumulates there, and secondary radiation, it is sometimes stronger than the primary one.

It is still unknown what is happening in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, where the remains of the Mir space station lie. During the descent, the Mir melted in the upper atmosphere. But did the mutated mold die?

And not so long ago, experts monitoring the health of astronauts announced that mold had already been discovered on the new ISS. The reason for its occurrence is very simple: the astronauts piled wet towels on the panels. The fungi that people washed off themselves began to grow. As soon as the mold was discovered, the astronauts urgently carried out antibacterial treatment.

After the emergency at the Mir station, a whole program was created at the Institute of Biomedical Problems to study the behavior of microorganisms in space. It was called Biorisk. Special equipment was developed for the experiment. The material was spores of bacilli and microscopic fungi, the most resistant to external factors. They were placed on the metal structures from which the outer shell of the spacecraft was made. This sample was left in a Petri dish, which was hermetically sealed. There was a membrane filter on the lid. It allowed air to pass inside the cup, but kept the microorganisms inside.

Microorganisms spent 18 months in space. So for the first time it was proved that bacteria can not only survive in extreme conditions, but also under the influence of the strongest radiation to transform into stronger organisms.

After the return of Alexander Serebrov to Earth, the symptoms of a strange disease began to intensify. Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea and constant weakness did not allow a normal life. For help, Alexander Serebrov turned to the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, but the doctors could not make an accurate diagnosis.

Alexander Serebrov says:

“At the institute, they told me: “Well, you have a yeast bacterium in your intestines, but we have no analogues on Earth, it’s a mutant, so we don’t know how to treat it.”

Alexander Serebrov understands that, most likely, he will never recover. The astronaut can only hope that the microorganism does not show new symptoms.

“I am a mutant,” Serebrov laughs. They don't know what to treat me for. So I'm unique, a person with unique content."

However, not only the mystery of the Mir station is connected with the properties of microorganisms unknown to science

Technical problems:

Why was the Mir station sunk?

Flights into space have always been associated with great risk for the crew. But staying on a space station is also unsafe for astronauts. The Mir orbital station was launched into orbit in February 1986 and operated until 2001, when it was sunk in the Pacific Ocean. Over the 15 years of operation at the station, many incidents have occurred.

On February 23, 1997, an atmosphere regeneration oxygen bomb ignited at the station. At the station at that moment there were six people from the 22nd and 23rd expeditions: Valery Korzun, Alexander Kaleri, Vasily Tsibliyev, Alexander Lazutkin, Reinhold Ewald and Jerry Linenger. Two Soyuz TM ships were docked to the station, which made it possible to evacuate all the people, but one of the ships was cut off. The situation was worsened by the fact that the station was smoky. The entire crew put on gas masks. After the source of fire was eliminated due to smoke, the astronauts had to wear respirators for some time. The crew members themselves were able to put out the fire before it got out of control. The investigation showed that the fire was caused by a single defect in the oxygen cartridge.

Air conditioning leak

During the 23rd expedition in March 1997, the air conditioning system failed - first, the Elektron oxygen generation units failed successively, and then a refrigerant leak began - poisonous ethylene glycol. The temperature at the station rose to 50 °C at the maximum allowable 28 °C, and humidity increased. By the end of March, the source of the leak was found. On April 6, Progress-M34 was launched from the Earth, containing additional materials for the repair of the station, oxygen bombs for regeneration, and water supplies. By the end of April, a dozen cracks in the tubes of the station's air conditioning system were found and repaired. The station returned to normal operation. Shuttle Atlantis mission STS-84, which was under threat of cancellation due to technical problems at the station was allowed. She delivered oxygen generation units to the station to replace the failed ones and water supplies.

Collision of "Progress - M34" with the module "Spectrum"

On June 25, 1997, during an experiment on manual docking in the BPS + TORU mode (ballistic precision rendezvous - teleoperator control mode) of Progress-M34, a loss of control of the space truck occurred. As a result, Progress crashed into the station, damaging the solar panels and leaving a hole in the Spektr module with an area of ​​2 cm2. The MCC urgently gave the command to seal the module, thus ensuring the life support of the station. The situation was complicated by the fact that cables ran through the hatch connecting the module to the station. The shutdown of the module resulted in a temporary loss of electricity generated by the station - with the de-energization of the module, the Spektra solar panels were turned off, which provided 40% of the electricity. It was only by August 1997 that the power supply to the Mir station was fully restored. The crew members of the 23rd expedition were awarded state awards: Lazutkin received the title of Hero of Russia, Tsibliyev - the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree.

Loss of oxygen

On August 28, 1997, another trouble happened on Mir. In the evening, shortly before lights out, the Electron hydrolysis unit, which produces oxygen, spontaneously shut down. The astronauts tried several times to turn it on, but the Electron immediately turned off again. From the Earth it was recommended to postpone the repair of the installation until the morning and use a solid-fuel oxygen generator - a checker that produces oxygen when burned. However, the flare did not catch fire.

Remembering that in February, due to exactly the same checkers (produced by the Moscow NPO Nauka), a serious fire broke out at the station, the MCC ordered that checkers no longer be used and still try to repair Electron. Fortunately, the malfunction was fixed in just a few minutes (it turned out that some kind of contact had broken), and already at half past ten, the normal supply of oxygen to the station was restored.

Loss of orientation

In September 1997, as a result of a computer error, Mir lost its orientation to the Sun. For astronomical observations of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars, it is necessary to orient the telescopes or the entire station accordingly. The solar collectors of the power supply system must be constantly directed towards the Sun. And therefore, having lost the right direction, the station was left without the main source of energy. Also, a certain orientation is necessary for various antenna devices, which means that control was also lost, since the crew could not accurately find out the location of the station. It took 24 hours before control of the station was restored.

However, it was this incident that was the last straw - since mid-1999, due to difficulties in financing the flight program of the Mir station, in order to save money, the operating mode of the complex was changed by including relatively long unmanned sections in the program. And in 2001, it was decided to flood the orbital station in the Pacific Ocean.