Mir heading our way, but splashdown site unknown

By ANNE BESTON

As an ageing Russian space station is being prepared for a fiery plunge into the Pacific Ocean, scientists are not sure exactly how close to New Zealand and Australia it will fall.

The Russian Mir space station, launched in 1986, is due to be nudged by remote-controlled rocket off its present orbit and into the Earth's atmosphere in March.

This will send it plummeting into the sea in a 500km-wide, 1000km-long area somewhere between Australia and South America.

The rocket that will end Mir's 15 years in space was due to blast off about 7 o'clock last night and is expected to dock with Mir in four days time. Both spacecraft are scheduled to plunge into the sea on March 6.

About 40 tonnes of debris - about the size of three city buses - is expected to land somewhere in the South Pacific at a speed high enough to smash through two metres of reinforced concrete.

"It will be a pretty impressive sight to say the least, but where it finally lands will depend on its final orbit," said Wellington astronomer John Field.

Warren Hurley, at Stardome Observatory in Auckland, said he was getting a few calls every week from people concerned exactly where the space station would land.

Mr Field said the chances of debris falling on New Zealand were "pretty remote."

"They aim for somewhere where there are few islands, no people and no boats, but they will probably send out a warning to stay out of the area."

Most predictions have the two spacecraft crashing about 1500km west of Australia, but senior space experts have said there is no guarantee the ditching operation will go smoothly.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it will keep foreign Governments fully informed of the operation.

The troubled Mir station has been dogged by technical problems in recent years, including a serious fire and near-fatal collision with a cargo ship in 1997.

If something goes wrong this time, an emergency Russian crew of cosmonauts will be sent up to complete the operation. The most difficult part of the manoeuvre will be docking the Progress space rocket, which is about the size of a small office, with Mir.

Mr Field said that if Mir fell near New Zealand, it would be visible with the naked eye and was likely to be in the northern sky. A spectacular rainbow of colours, including red, yellow and blue, would accompany the descent.

Mir can be seen with the naked eye every morning over New Zealand at about 3 am.

In 1979 the United States Skylab space station was blasted back to Earth and was expected to land in the sea. Instead, debris fell in a sparsely populated area of Western Australia as well as over the Pacific Ocean.