The space station served as an important precursor to today's International Space Station. Aboard Mir, crews dealt for the first time with long-duration stays in space of more than 400 days.

On March 23, 2001, Mir met its end when Russia's space agency allowed the station to deorbit, leading the 134-ton structure to break up and crash over the Pacific Ocean.

On February 20, 1986, a Proton rose off its launchpad in Kazakstan bound for low Earth orbit. Its payload was a module designated 17KS, known better as the core stage of the Mir space station.

20 years ago this week, the Mir space station returned to Earth in a blaze of glory. For years, Mir’s crews had struggled to keep the station running despite its seeming determination to fall ...

For years longer than deemed possible, through pluck and ingenuity and sheer will, Russian engineers and cosmonauts kept the Mir space station in orbit. They added to it, tinkered with it, fixed ...

Mir's engineering heritage lives on in the design of the International Space Station. And, with some luck, it has a chance to become a foundation for the human outposts on the Moon and Mars.

OK, so it wouldn't actually be a piece of the Mir, but, as its vendor points out on the auction Web site eBay, "You can tell your friends that this is a real piece of the Mir Space Station, and ...

Sure, it stank. The Mir space station became a malodorous, filthy, chronically malfunctioning deathtrap. It was an orbiting Dumpster. It crashed into things. It caught on fire. It got moldy. A ...

On February 19, 1986, the Soviet Union launched the Mir space station. While this wasn't the first space station launched into orbit, it was the first one that had to be assembled piece-by-piece ...

KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) -- The Mir space station returned to Earth in pieces Friday, ending its 15-year, 2.2 billion-mile odyssey with a fiery plunge into the South Pacific. There was no immediate ...

An era will end next February when the Russian space station Mir plunges into the Pacific Ocean, discarded off the coast of Australia after 15 years of close calls and amazing feats. Mir was a ...