Mir's Untold Tales

As time went by and the station aged, crews no longer had the luxury of such pranks. The world remembers Mir for its hair-raising string of crises in the late 1990s--culminating in a collision with an unmanned cargo ship in 1997--but there were other, less publicized near misses. Cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov almost became a satellite himself when his safety tether came loose during a spacewalk. Luckily, he managed to grab hold of the station. In 1994, Mir lost its orientation, causing most of its onboard systems to sputter out, including the fans that keep oxygen circulating. To stay alive, the cosmonauts had to wave their hands in front of their faces to gather in breathable air and flap away carbon dioxide until Mir could power up again. "No one knew how torturous it was for the cosmonauts," says Bezyaev. "They spoke absolutely coolly."

Eventually, no amount of rocket-jock calm could hide the fact that Mir had become a deathtrap. Once parts of the glinting International Space Station went aloft, it was clear there was no need to keep the old outpost in orbit. So now, more than 15 years after it was launched on what was to have been a three-year flight, Mir will splash into history, its mission finished but its story only beginning to be told.

--Reported by Andrew Meier/Moscow