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Mir burnup sparks fears
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PACIFIC nations were yesterday anxiously eyeing the skies as Russia prepared to crash the ageing Mir space station into an area of ocean where at least 27 fishing boats were spread out.
Mir is doomed to start dumping into the vast South Pacific at around 6.20am GMT (9am Beijing Time) today, just over 15 years and one month since it was launched by the former Soviet Union.
The Russian mission control chief Vladimir Solovyov yesterday launched the final countdown, with 24 hours to go, saying Mir had reached the point of no return on the way to its fiery descent to Earth.
But a small number of merchant ships are also travelling through the 6,000km by 200km area in which an estimated 1,500 pieces of Mir debris, some of them as big as a car, are projected to splash down, New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed.
The boats have been warned they are risking disaster, but New Zealand authorities could not say whether they would move out of the line of fire in time.
Five international flights due to pass over the area at the critical time have also been delayed.
The 137-tonne Mir is expected to burn up after reentering the earth's atmosphere, but scientists calculate that around 20 tonnes of debris will make it into the Pacific at 2.30pm (Beijing Time) today.
While scientists remain confident none of the Mir debris will land near inhabited land, nobody can be 100 per cent certain, particularly in an ocean containing hundreds of spread-out, remote island nations.
Richard Templeton, a spokesman for Emergency Management Australia, said the Canberra government would have just one hour's warning if anything went wrong. But he voiced confidence everything would be okay. “This is a controlled event."
Even the Japanese have been warned by their government to stay at home in case anything goes wrong.
Authorities in French Polynesia were also taking the risks of an accidental fallout seriously and have put a team on high alert to monitor the Mir's trajectory.
A group of 50 people, including leading Russian scientists and cosmonauts, were meanwhile holding an anxious vigil yesterday at a luxury resort in Fiji, which is the closest to the point where the spaceship is expected to streak down.
The private expedition involves both Leonid Gorshkov, one of the chief architects of the Mir, and Sergey Zaletin, the commander of the final mission to the doomed space station.(SD-Agencies)
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