Russian space station. It consists of a core module launched in 1986 and five additional modules launched separately over the next decade and attached to the core unit to create a large, versatile space laboratory. The third generation of Russian space stations (see Salyut), Mir featured six docking ports for modules and other spacecraft, expanded living quarters, more power, and modernized research equipment. It supported human habitation between 1986 and 2000, including an uninterrupted stretch of occupancy of almost 10 years, and it hosted a series of U.S. astronauts in 1995-98 as part of a Mir-space shuttle cooperative endeavour. In 1995, Valery Polyakov (b. 1942) set a world endurance record of nearly 438 days in space aboard Mir. In March 2001 the abandoned station was brought down in a controlled reentry, with the surviving pieces falling into the Pacific Ocean
(Russian) A rural peasant village or community In Russia before the modern reforms, the serfs of the Crown and those of some nobles lived in Mirs, where they elected their village assembly or council responsible for the collection of rent and taxes When serfdom was ended in 1861, the government reimbursed the land-owning nobles and assigned title to some of the land to the Mirs which were required to make long term payments to the government The land was thus owned in common by the peasants of the Mir, each of whom was assigned a plot of land to farm The village assembly elected an elder who administered tax collections and from time to time allocated the commonly owned land among those entitled to farm it The system failed to sustain the growing population and was abolished in 1906