Editing Mir (section)

====Final days and deorbit====
{{main|Deorbit of Mir}}
[[File:Mir reentry photo.jpg|thumb|upright|''Mir'' breaks up in Earth's atmosphere over the [[South Pacific Ocean|South Pacific]] on 23 March 2001.]]
Following the 8 June 1998 departure of ''Discovery'', the EO-25 crew of [[Nikolai Budarin|Budarin]] and [[Talgat Musabayev|Musabayev]] remained on ''Mir'', completing materials experiments and compiling a station inventory. On 2 July, [[Russian Federal Space Agency|Roskosmos]] director Yuri Koptev announced that, due to a lack of funding to keep ''Mir'' active, the station would be deorbited in June 1999.<ref name="SSSM"/> The [[Mir EO-26|EO-26]] crew of [[Gennady Padalka]] and [[Sergei Avdeyev]] arrived on 15 August in [[Soyuz TM-28]], alongside physicist [[Yuri Baturin]], who departed with the EO-25 crew on 25 August in [[Soyuz TM-27]]. The crew carried out two spacewalks, one inside ''Spektr'' to reseat some power cables and another outside to set up experiments delivered by [[Progress M-40]], which also carried a large amount of propellant to begin alterations to ''Mir''{{'}}s orbit in preparation for the station's decommissioning. 20 November 1998 saw the launch of ''[[Zarya (ISS module)|Zarya]]'', the first module of the [[International Space Station|ISS]], but delays to the new station's service module [[Zvezda (ISS module)|''Zvezda'']] had led to calls for ''Mir'' to be kept in orbit past 1999. Roscosmos confirmed that it would not fund ''Mir'' past the set deorbit date.<ref name="SSSM"/>

The crew of [[Mir EO-27|EO-27]], [[Viktor Mikhailovich Afanasyev|Viktor Afanasyev]] and [[Jean-Pierre Haigneré]], arrived in [[Soyuz TM-29]] on 22 February 1999 alongside [[Ivan Bella]], who returned to Earth with Padalka in Soyuz TM-28. The crew carried out three EVAs to retrieve experiments and deploy a prototype communications antenna on ''Sofora''. On 1 June it was announced that the deorbit of the station would be delayed by six months to allow time to seek alternative funding to keep the station operating. The rest of the expedition was spent preparing the station for its deorbit; a special analog computer was installed and each of the modules, starting with the docking module, was mothballed in turn and sealed off. The crew loaded their results into Soyuz TM-29 and departed ''Mir'' on 28 August 1999, ending a run of continuous occupation, which had lasted for eight days short of ten years.<ref name="SSSM"/> The station's [[control moment gyroscope]]s (CMGs, or "gyrodynes") and main computer were shut down on 7 September, leaving [[Progress M-42]] to control ''Mir'' and refine the station's orbital decay rate.<ref name="SSSM"/>

Near the end of its life, there were plans for private interests to purchase ''Mir'', possibly for use as the first orbital [[television studio|television]]/[[Film studio|movie studio]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2021|reason=no source provided}} The privately funded [[Soyuz TM-30]] mission by MirCorp, that was launched on 4 April 2000, carried two crew members, [[Sergei Zalyotin]] and [[Aleksandr Kaleri]], to the station for two months to do repair work with the hope of proving that the station could be made safe. This was to be the last crewed mission to ''Mir''—while Russia was optimistic about ''Mir''{{'s}} future, its commitments to the ISS project left no funding to support the aging station.<ref name="SSSM"/><ref name="CNN">{{cite news|title=Mir Destroyed in Fiery Descent|publisher=CNN|url=http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/03/23/mir.descent/index.html|access-date=10 November 2009|date=22 March 2001|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091121134003/http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/03/23/mir.descent/index.html|archive-date=21 November 2009}}</ref>

''Mir''{{'}}s deorbit was carried out in three stages. The first stage involved waiting for [[drag (physics)|atmospheric drag]] to [[orbital decay|reduce the station's orbit]] to an average of {{convert|220|km|mi}}. This began with the docking of [[Progress M1-5]], a modified version of the [[Progress-M]] carrying 2.5 times more fuel in place of supplies. The second stage was the transfer of the station into a 165&nbsp;×&nbsp;220&nbsp;km (103&nbsp;×&nbsp;137&nbsp;mi) orbit. This was achieved with two burns of Progress M1-5's control engines at 00:32 UTC and 02:01 UTC on 23 March 2001. After a two-orbit pause, the third and final stage of the deorbit began with the burn of Progress M1-5's control engines and main engine at 05:08 UTC, lasting 22+ minutes. [[Atmospheric reentry]] (arbitrarily defined beginning at 100&nbsp;km/60&nbsp;mi AMSL) occurred at 05:44 UTC near [[Nadi]], [[Fiji]]. Major destruction of the station began around 05:52 UTC and most of the unburned fragments fell into the [[South Pacific Ocean]] around 06:00 UTC.<ref name="Reentry News">{{cite web|title=The Final Days of Mir |publisher=The Aerospace Corporation |url=http://www.reentrynews.com/Mir/sequence.html |access-date=16 April 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090522131135/http://www.reentrynews.com/Mir/sequence.html |archive-date=22 May 2009 }}</ref><ref name="Reentry Page">{{cite web|title=Mir Space Station Reentry Page|publisher=Space Online|url=http://www.ik1sld.org/mirreentry_page.htm|access-date=16 April 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070614034327/http://www.ik1sld.org/mirreentry_page.htm|archive-date=14 June 2007}}</ref>