Mir Space Station, by Brian W. McMullin, 1986. In the mid-1980s, Moscow announced plans to have a large, permanently manned space station orbiting the Earth in the 1990s. The USSR launched Mir, the core vehicle of a modular space station, in February 1986. Mir is shown here with two of four modules attached and two Soyuz spacecraft. The Russians let Mir fall out of orbit, burn up on reentry, and then harmlessly splash into the south Pacific in March 2001.