Any possibility of the Russian space station Mir falling to Earth as a result of the interrupted radio contact with it over the past 24 hours is totally ruled out, an official at Russia's mission control center said.

The flight of the aging station is being monitored by equipment down on Earth, and the station is flying in a safe mode at an altitude of 315 kilometers, they said.

Mission control was unable to establish radio contact with Mir between 6:41 p.m. Moscow time December 25 and 3:45 p.m. on December 26.

Deputy mission control chief Viktor Blagov has said that the station is being completely controlled by center experts. In October, he noted, Mir's altitude was raised, ensuring that it will orbit safely at least until the middle of March.

Stage Set For Mir's Firey End
Russia's Aerospace Agency also forwarded to the government last week all the documents necessary for decommissioning the country's aging space station Mir, agency head Yuri Koptev has announced.

Speaking with Interfax on Tuesday, Koptev said a definitive decision to bring Mir plummeting back to Earth should come before yearend. The preliminary decision to decommission Mir was made this fall.

The station has been in orbit since 1986 and has been doing so unmanned since this past summer. Mir is fated to be sunk in the Pacific Ocean late this coming February.

A tanker spacecraft will deliver fuel needed for deorbiting the station. Cosmonauts Salimzhan Sharipov and Pavel Vinogradov will be poised to up fly to Mir if the Progress M1 tanker vessel does not dock with the station in automatic mode.

earlier report
Russian Mission Control Loses Contact With Mir
Russian mission control has been unable to establish contact with the Mir space station since 3:00 p.m. Moscow time Monday, an aerospace source told Interfax.

Communications with Mir, which is orbiting on autopilot, are usually established once or twice a day.

Mission control has been attempting to establish communications with the station every ninety minutes since it failed to do so on Monday afternoon. All of these attempts have so far been unsuccessful, the source said.

The next attempt will be made at about 2:00 p.m. Moscow time.

If communications with Mir cannot be reestablished, an emergency crew may be sent to the station. Such a move had been foreseen in two emergency situations: a serious failure of the control systems or a failure by an unmanned fuel ship to automatically dock with the station.

The emergency crew of Salizhan Sharipov and Pavel Vinogradov is now training for a possible flight planned in case the Progress ship is unable to dock with Mir automatically. The Progress is to deliver fuel to Mir in January for the station's controlled descent into the Pacific Ocean.

But the source said that Sharipov has no personal experience with manual docking of a manned craft, so if worse comes to worst the back- up crew of Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin may be sent instead.

The Russian government decided in the fall to shut down the aging Mir, which has been in orbit since 1986. The station has been on autopilot since the summer of 2000.

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