The ‘Vacant’ Sign Comes Off Mir

Hoping to give the Mir space station new life as a commercial venture, two cosmonauts entered the run-down station Thursday and prepared to make it habitable again nearly eight months after the last crew shut it down.

Foreign investors, working with the Russian government, want to use the Soviet-era station for a variety of moneymaking ventures, such as scientific experiments, advertising from space, Internet camera hookups and perhaps even a space hotel for wealthy adventurers.

For the first time, private companies will be able to arrange to use an orbiting platform in space without having to get government approval--as long as they have enough cash.

“Mir has in fact become a private business,” said Sergei K. Gromov, chief engineer of the state-run space agency Energiya, which built Mir. “Today, Mir is open to any commercial offers that may come along.”

The Russian government had all but given up on Mir and had planned to let it fall from orbit this spring. Then private investors led by U.S. telecommunications magnate Walt Anderson stepped forward with $20 million to resume flights to the station. The new company, operating under the name MirCorp, is a partnership between the investors and Energiya.

“Any company that is willing to invest its money in research is more than welcome to pay the money and get results,” Gromov said. “MirCorp is planning to rapidly broaden the market of potential clients and to start looking for offers from companies that have nothing to do with space--except for the fact that their employees watch satellite TV at home.”

The first assignment for the two newly arrived cosmonauts, Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kaleri, will be to find a small air leak that has plagued the 14-year-old vessel since last summer. They also will face temperatures of more than 80 degrees inside the station and numerous mechanical problems.

“We are glad to welcome you from aboard the orbital station Mir,” Zaletin said in a television broadcast that showed the two floating weightless in the station. Kaleri piped up, “It is dry, clean and rather warm here.”

Launched by the Soviet Union in 1986, Mir was the eighth and most sophisticated of a series of manned stations the country put into orbit. It was designed to last five years, but after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian space program fell on hard times, and it has never had the money to replace the station.

Mir experienced several near-disasters in 1997, including a collision with a cargo ship that punctured a module and a fire that almost proved fatal.

Russia began cooperating with the United States on space exploration in the mid-1990s, and seven NASA astronauts spent time on Mir in preparation for the 16-nation, $60-billion International Space Station now under construction.

Two modules of the station have been launched, but the program has fallen two years behind schedule, in large part because of Russia’s inability to meet its financial commitments to the project. NASA officials, who are eager to get the new station operating, have urged Russia to abandon Mir and focus its energy on the international project.

For many Russians, however, Mir remains an important symbol of the international prestige their nation once had. Government officials agreed only reluctantly last year to give up on Mir and were overjoyed when Anderson stepped forward with the money to save the station.

“We think that we can come up with clever, imaginative ways to use a manned orbiting platform,” MirCorp President Jeffrey Manber said at the time. “God bless NASA and all the government space agencies, but we want to unleash the full imagination of the private sector.”

Under the new corporate structure, the marketing of Mir will be the responsibility of the foreign investors, while Energiya will retain control over the space operations.

The cost of operating Mir is estimated at $100 million a year. Officials of MirCorp and Energiya signed an agreement Thursday, after the crew boarded the station, to keep Mir going for the rest of 2000.

“What attracts the majority of foreign investors to Mir is the fact that this is the only orbiting station in the world where various experiments could be conducted,” said Nikolai N. Pronin, chief spokesman for Energiya. “The International Space Station is still nonexistent, and if someone wants to conduct long-term experiments in space, Mir would be the only place to do it.”

The main job of the first crew sent back to Mir is to get the station up and running and repair the air leak. It will also conduct experiments and take a spacewalk.

An unmanned cargo ship sent to Mir last month delivered a new supply of oxygen, which the cosmonauts pumped into the station upon their arrival. Even though Mir had been empty for months, the loss of air was not so serious that the cosmonauts had to wear spacesuits when they entered the station.

Energiya’s Gromov said the arrival of the crew symbolizes the beginning of Mir’s “second life.”

“The major change that has occurred with Mir is not technical but legal,” he said. “Mir is open for business and has been granted the right to do it.”