Mir Plunges to Earth

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/10/1997 at 12:00 AM EDT

It's over! Remnants of Russia's 15-year-old Mir space station plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Fiji on Friday, leaving in its fiery wake a huge smoke trail that streaked across the sky. Mission Control outside Moscow said a final signal at 12:07 a.m. EST switched on engines for a 20-minute burst that irrevocably altered the orbiter's trajectory, pitching it into a designated splashdown zone in a remote part of the Pacific. "It has been an exemplary operation, and our experts have not made a mistake in any single step, not in a millimeter," Yuri Koptev, the head of the Russian Aerospace agency, told the world's press. For those hoping to win some free eats, sorry -- the space station missed the target set up by Taco Bell, which had promised complimentary tacos to all Americans had Mir hit the bull's eye.