2 Cosmonauts Set Off for Rendezvous With an Empty Mir
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MOSCOW — Two cosmonauts blasted off Tuesday for the Mir space station on a mission to resuscitate the 14-year-old craft, which until recently had appeared in danger of being scrapped.
Mir has circled Earth unoccupied for seven months, since the cash-strapped Russian space agency recalled the last crew in late August.
The station was to be decommissioned around the end of March and dropped from its orbit to burn up in the atmosphere, with any remaining pieces plunging into the ocean.
That fate was averted when Amsterdam-based MirCorp agreed to pay between $10 million and $20 million to lease commercial rights to the station.
It is expected to take the cosmonauts’ Soyuz rocket capsule until Thursday to adjust its orbit to Mir’s and dock. The mission is scheduled to last 60 days.
-- Associated Press
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