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Progress M1-5 was the Progress spacecraft which was launched by Russia in 2001 to deorbit the fifteen-year-old ''Mir'' space station before it naturally fell from orbit, potentially landing in a populated area. The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos, was responsible for the mission. Launched in January 2001 after a short delay due to a problem with ''Mir'', on 27 January Progress M1-5 became the last spacecraft to dock with the station. It spent two months attached to the Kvant-1 module before deorbiting the station on 23 March 2001. ''Mir'' re-entered the atmosphere with Progress M1-5 still docked, disintegrating over the Pacific Ocean, with debris falling into the ocean at around 06:00 GMT. During the early stages of the unmanned Progress M1-5 mission, a manned Soyuz was placed on standby to launch in order to complete the mission if a problem occurred. The decision to deorbit ''Mir'' attracted both praise and criticism for Rosaviakosmos, while several campaigns to save the station were conducted. ==Background== ''Mir'' was the seventh and last manned space station to be launched as part of the Soviet space programme, and was the first true modular space station to be launched. The first component, the Core Module, was launched by a Proton-K rocket on 19 February 1986.〔 This had been followed by six more modules, launched between 1987 and 1996, all using Proton-K rockets, except one which was launched aboard .〔 Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ''Mir'' became the property of the Russian government, and the newly established Russian Aviation and Space Agency.〔 It supported 28 long duration crews, visited by 40 manned Soyuz and Shuttle missions, whilst 64 unmanned Progress spacecraft were launched to support it. It was visited by 125 cosmonauts and astronauts, who performed 75 spacewalks.〔 During the Shuttle-''Mir'' programme, a series of American Space Shuttle missions visited ''Mir'' between 1995 and 1998 in preparation for the construction of the International Space Station. After the construction of the International Space Station began in 1998, Russian resources were split between the two stations. In 2000, Rosaviakosmos signed an agreement with MirCorp to lease the station for commercial use, with the Soyuz TM-30 mission, intended to prepare the station for future use and conduct some commercial research, being flown in later that year. This was to have been followed by more missions, including flights with space tourists, however due to the Russian government being concerned about MirCorp's ability to fund these missions, Rosaviakosmos decided against funding the continued operation of ''Mir''.〔〔 In November 2000, Rosaviakosmos decided to deorbit ''Mir'', and the next month Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed an order to do so. By this stage ''Mir'' was well past the end of its design life, and Rosaviakosmos General Director Yuri Koptev believed that "any of its systems could well fail at any time".〔 Therefore, it was decided to deorbit it whilst it was still functioning, rather than risk it falling back to Earth out of control, like Skylab in 1979 and Salyut 7 in 1991, potentially dropping debris over a populated area.〔 At the time, ''Mir'' was the largest spacecraft ever to reenter the Earth's atmosphere, and there were concerns that sizeable pieces of debris, particularly from the docking assemblies, gyrodynes and external structure, could survive reentry. Progress M1-5, which had originally been built to resupply and refuel either ''Mir'' or the International Space Station, was selected to perform the deorbit manoeuvre. Its mission earned it the nickname ''Hearse''.〔 It was a Progress-M1 11F615A55 spacecraft, with the serial number 254. An uninhabited area of the southern Pacific ocean was selected for the station to be deorbited into, as had been done with five earlier Salyut spacecraft. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Progress M1-5」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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