Skylab

Skylab was a manned, orbiting spacecraft which included the Apollo Telescope mount (a solar observatory) and capability for a number of experiments. It involved four launches, the first unmanned to deploy the first unit. Skylab 1 itself was launched on May 14, 1973 and first manned during the period May 25 to June 22, 1973. It had to deal with the failure of the heat shield to deploy on Skylab 1; that repair was made and the mission was successful. Skylab 3 was launched on 28 July, 1973 and landed in the Pacific on September 25. The third and final manned period was an 84 day mission from November 16, 1973, to February 8, 1974.

MIR

For 14 years the ambitious Soviet MIR space station stayed aloft, reaching a number of milestones in the habitation of space and providing a large amount of experience in the continuous operation of a space station. It's last few years were troubled by many maintenance problems and the plan as of the end of 2000 is to ditch it in the Pacific Ocean during 2001.

A brief history of the MIR space station. (from an Associated Press bulletin.)

• 1986: USSR launches core module to last three to five years .
• 1987: Station's second component, Kvant 1 (Quantum 1), docks .
• 1990: Japanese cosmonaut reporter, Toyohiro Akiyama, visits space station.
• 1991: Cargo ship loses control, nearly colliding with Mir. Crew forced to stay in orbit several months longer than scheduled after project cannot afford to bring them back
• 1993: Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov returns from 438-day mission, the longest human spaceflight.
  Norman Thagard becomes the first U.S. astronaut to visit Mir
• 1997: Oxygen-generating canister bursts into flames, nearly forcing crew to abandon space station .
  June 25, cargo ship rams station, piercing a laboratory module causing Mir pressure to fall.
  July, cosmonaut disconnects a power plug prematurely, setting the station adrift August, main computer fails, setting the station adrift again .
• 1999: Russia announces Mir will be taken out of orbit in 2000.
• 2000: Netherlands-based MirCorp, agrees to lease Mir with U.S. businessman Dennis Tito to go to station as "space tourist".
• February, 2001, Mir will be plunged into Pacific Ocean