A crowd of several hundred gathered along the beach in downtown Nadi tonight, reveling under a fire-streaked sky, as Russia's Mir Space Station swept by at speeds approaching that of sound. Onlookers gazed with a mixture of awe and reverence, as the 22-year-old station shot past in a hail of scattered fire. According to witnesses on the ground, Mir had broken into five to eight distinct parts, lighting up the horizon with its flames. Beach-front revelers reported seeing a trail of smoke tailing the craft as it fell, and a deafening explosion that most believed was caused by the craft's supersonic descent. Still far removed from the splash-down site itself, onlookers in Fiji could provide no reports of Mir's actual crash. Instead, the blazing streak slipped across the edge of the horizon and vanished into thin air. Meanwhile, far beyond Fiji's horizon line, the Mir Re-Entry Observation Expedition's two airplanes witnessed an even more spectacular show as Mir swept in hard, fast and fiery. Expedition organizers are currently preparing this unique video footage for broadcast, and hope to have it up on the site within the next several hours..

Mir's final orbit and the targeted area for impact

Mir Re-entry website - Back to "Science and technology"