155-478: Buran ( Russian : Буран , IPA: [bʊˈran] , lit. ' blizzard ' ; GRAU index serial number : 11F35 1K , construction number: 1.01 ) was the first spaceplane to be produced as part of the Soviet/Russian Buran program . Buran completed one uncrewed spaceflight in 1988, and was destroyed in 2002 due to the collapse of its storage hangar. The Buran-class orbiters used
310-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
465-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
620-479: A bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide had formed around their heads. Most of the food eaten by station crews was frozen, refrigerated or canned. Meals were prepared by the cosmonauts, with the help of a dietitian , before their flight to the station. The diet was designed to provide around 100 g of protein , 130 g of fat and 330 g of carbohydrates per day, in addition to appropriate mineral and vitamin supplements. Meals were spaced out through
775-700: A counterpart to Mir , while the Soviets were planning to construct Mir -2 in the 1990s as a replacement for the station. Because of budget and design constraints, Freedom never progressed past mock-ups and minor component tests and, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Space Race , the project was nearly cancelled entirely by the United States House of Representatives . The post-Soviet economic chaos in Russia also led to
930-538: A cylindrical tunnel leading to the androgynous peripheral docking unit (APAS-89). Unlike the Space Shuttle, the docking compartment for Buran would feature an extendable tunnel to increase clearance between orbiter and station. Another hatch, facing into the payload bay, was designed to support extravehicular activities. The docking module was not installed for 1K's only spaceflight, however the Kristall module of
1085-420: A decision was made in late 1987/early 1988 not to use the engines on flight articles. Accordingly, for the first Buran orbital flight the engines were not installed. The automatic landing system was capable of performing a fully automatic descent, approach and landing from any point located in the "admissible starting conditions area" at 100 kilometres (62 mi) altitude, controlling the orbiter's flight during
1240-553: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Mir Mir ( Russian : Мир , IPA: [ˈmʲir] ; lit. ' peace ' or ' world ' ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russian Federation . Mir
1395-509: A foul smell, which was often cited as visitors' strongest impression. Researchers in 2018 reported, after detecting the presence on the International Space Station (ISS) of five Enterobacter bugandensis bacterial strains, none pathogenic to humans, that microorganisms on ISS should be carefully monitored to continue ensuring a medically healthy environment for the astronauts. Some biologists were concerned about
1550-471: A goal of developing technologies required for permanent occupation of space . Mir was the first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at 3,644 days, until it was surpassed by the ISS on 23 October 2010. It holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, with Valeri Polyakov spending 437 days and 18 hours on
1705-414: A good seal. A lever operated a powerful fan and a suction hole slid open: the air stream carried the waste away. Solid waste was collected in individual bags which were stored in an aluminium container. Full containers were transferred to Progress spacecraft for disposal. Liquid waste was evacuated by a hose connected to the front of the toilet, with anatomically appropriate "urine funnel adapters" attached to
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#17327722371651860-535: A guitar. It commonly housed three crew members, but was capable of supporting as many as six for up to a month. The station was designed to remain in orbit for around five years; it remained in orbit for fifteen. As a result, NASA astronaut John Blaha reported that, with the exception of Priroda and Spektr , which were added late in the station's life, Mir did look used, which is to be expected given it had been lived in for ten to eleven years without being brought home and cleaned. The time zone used on board Mir
2015-455: A hand crank were 14 metres (46 ft) long, meaning that all of the station's modules could be accessed during spacewalks. Each module was fitted with external components specific to the experiments that were carried out within that module, the most obvious being the Travers antenna mounted to Priroda . This synthetic aperture radar consisted of a large dish-like framework mounted outside
2170-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
2325-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
2480-424: A medical doctor he observed the effects of stress on his comrades that he believed was the outcome of following an itinerary without making modifications to it. Despite this, he commented that his comrades performed all their tasks in a supremely professional manner. Astronaut Shannon Lucid , who set the record for longest stay in space by a woman while aboard Mir (surpassed by Sunita Williams 11 years later on
2635-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
2790-426: A mounting point for externally mounted exposure experiments. To assist in moving objects around the exterior of the station during EVAs , Mir featured two Strela cargo cranes mounted to the sides of the core module, used for moving spacewalking cosmonauts and parts. The cranes consisted of telescopic poles assembled in sections which measured around 1.8 metres (6 ft) when collapsed, but when extended using
2945-639: A new space station, which eventually became the ISS . They also agreed, in preparation for this new project, that the United States would be heavily involved in the Mir programme as part of an international project known as the Shuttle–Mir Programme . The project, sometimes called "Phase One", was intended to allow the United States to learn from Russian experience in long-duration spaceflight and to foster
3100-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
3255-470: A shortage of power as a result. The first two arrays, each 38 m (409 ft ) in area, were launched on the core module, and together provided a total of 9 kW of power. A third, dorsal panel was launched on Kvant -1 and mounted on the core module in 1987, providing a further 2 kW from a 22 m (237 ft ) area. Kvant -2, launched in 1989, provided two 10 m (32.8 ft) long panels which supplied 3.5 kW each, whilst Kristall
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#17327722371653410-420: A specific purpose in mind (for instance, the core module functioned largely as living quarters), thus eliminating the need to install all the station's equipment in one module. In its completed configuration, the space station consisted of seven different modules, each launched into orbit separately over a period of ten years by either Proton-K rockets or Space Shuttle Atlantis . In addition to
3565-524: A spherical compartment at the forward end of the station. It was originally planned that the ports would connect to 7.5-tonne (8.3-short-ton) modules derived from the Soyuz spacecraft . These modules would have used a Soyuz propulsion module, as in Soyuz and Progress , and the descent and orbital modules would have been replaced with a long laboratory module. Following a February 1979 governmental resolution,
3720-569: A spirit of cooperation between the two nations and their space agencies , the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). The project prepared the way for further cooperative space ventures, specifically, "Phase Two" of the joint project, the construction of the ISS. The programme was announced in 1993; the first mission started in 1994, and
3875-538: A tethered sleeping bag, a fold-out desk, a porthole, and storage for personal effects. Visiting crews had no allocated sleep module, instead attaching a sleeping bag to an available space on a wall; US astronauts installed themselves within Spektr until a collision with a Progress spacecraft caused the depressurisation of that module. It was important that crew accommodations be well ventilated; otherwise, astronauts could wake up oxygen-deprived and gasping for air, because
4030-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
4185-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
4340-497: Is a good countermeasure for the bone and muscle density loss that occurs in low-gravity situations. There were two space toilets (ASUs) on Mir , located in the core module and Kvant -2 . They used a fan-driven suction system similar to the Space Shuttle Waste Collection System. The user is first fastened to the toilet seat, which was equipped with spring-loaded restraining bars to ensure
4495-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
4650-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
4805-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
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4960-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
5115-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
5270-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
5425-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
5580-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
5735-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
5890-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
6045-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
6200-1000: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
6355-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
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6510-570: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
6665-647: The Mir space station was equipped with an APAS-89 docking port for potential visits to the station by future Buran flights and was later used during the Shuttle-Mir program. The Onboard Manipulator System ( Система Бортовых Манипуляторов ), similar to the Space Shuttle's RMS , was developed at the Central Research and Development Institute for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics to support operations with payload. It could be operated both in manual and automatic modes. The orbiter could carry, depending on
6820-568: The RKA Mission Control Centre (TsUP). Radio links were also used during rendezvous and docking procedures and for audio and video communication between crew members, flight controllers and family members. As a result, Mir was equipped with several communication systems used for different purposes. The station communicated directly with the ground via the Lira antenna mounted to the core module . The Lira antenna also had
6975-622: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
7130-584: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
7285-578: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
7440-455: The expendable Energia rocket, a class of super heavy-lift launch vehicle . Besides describing the first operational Soviet/Russian shuttle orbiter, "Buran" was also the designation for the entire Soviet/Russian spaceplane project and its flight articles, which were known as "Buran-class orbiters". The construction of the Buran spacecraft began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale orbiter
7595-468: The nickel-cadmium storage batteries installed throughout the station. The arrays rotated in only one degree of freedom over a 180° arc, and tracked the Sun using Sun sensors and motors installed in the array mounts. The station itself also had to be oriented to ensure optimum illumination of the arrays. When the station's all-sky sensor detected that Mir had entered Earth's shadow, the arrays were rotated to
7750-426: The skeleton , or spaceflight osteopenia . Other significant effects include fluid redistribution, a slowing of the cardiovascular system , decreased production of red blood cells , balance disorders, and a weakening of the immune system . Lesser symptoms include loss of body mass, nasal congestion, sleep disturbance, excess flatulence , and puffiness of the face. These effects begin to reverse quickly upon return to
7905-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
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#17327722371658060-477: The Accessory Unit ( Блок Дополнительных Приборов ) 37KB No.37070 was installed into the orbiter's payload bay. It carried recording equipment and accumulators providing power to onboard systems as the regular fuel cells based power system were not ready at the time. The second unit, 37KB No.37071 was built in 1987. A third unit 37KB No.37072 was planned, but this never happened because of the cancellation of
8215-509: The Aggregate Compartment (AO) housed the life support system, the power supply systems and parts of the thermal control system. The cockpit was similar in layout to that of the space shuttle, with three CRT displays. The docking module ( Стыковочный Модуль ) designed for Buran would have been mounted into the forward part of the payload bay. It would be a spherical compartment with a diameter of 2.67 m (8.8 ft), with
8370-471: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
8525-612: The Buran programme was officially cancelled in 1993. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
8680-469: The Earth. To prevent some of these effects, the station was equipped with two treadmills (in the core module and Kvant -2) and a stationary bicycle (in the core module); each cosmonaut was to cycle the equivalent of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) and run the equivalent of 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) per day. Cosmonauts used bungee cords to strap themselves to the treadmill. Researchers believe that exercise
8835-532: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
8990-573: The ISS), also commented about working aboard Mir : "I think going to work on a daily basis on Mir is very similar to going to work on a daily basis on an outstation in Antarctica. The big difference with going to work here is the isolation, because you really are isolated. You don't have a lot of support from the ground. You really are on your own." The most significant adverse effects of long-term weightlessness are muscle atrophy and deterioration of
9145-466: The ISS. The atmosphere on Mir was similar to Earth's . Normal air pressure on the station was 101.3 kPa (14.7 psi ); the same as at sea level on Earth. An Earth-like atmosphere offers benefits for crew comfort. Interkosmos ( Russian : ИнтерКосмос ) was a Soviet Union space exploration programme which allowed members from countries allied with the Soviet Union to participate in crewed and uncrewed space exploration missions. Participation
9300-590: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
9455-526: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
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#17327722371659610-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
9765-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
9920-458: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
10075-559: The Space Shuttle, in order to receive commands from the TsUP and Mir crew members via the TORU system. At Mir' s orbital altitude, the force of Earth's gravity was 88% of sea level gravity. While the constant free fall of the station offered a perceived sensation of weightlessness , the onboard environment was not one of weightlessness or zero gravity. The environment was often described as microgravity . This state of perceived weightlessness
10230-467: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
10385-600: The United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes called for a short joint space programme with one American astronaut deployed to the Russian space station Mir and two Russian cosmonauts deployed to a Space Shuttle. In September 1993, US Vice President Al Gore Jr. , and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin announced plans for
10540-471: The area, measured at 15 metres per second (29 kn) and gusting up to 20 metres per second (39 kn) at ground level. The dry mass of Buran-class orbiters was quoted 62 tonnes, with a maximum payload of 30 tonnes, for a maximum launch mass of 105 tonnes. Mass breakdown Dimensions Propulsion Unlike the US Space Shuttle , which was propelled by a combination of solid boosters and
10695-531: The boundary layer between the tiles and the atmosphere, while helping maintain a laminar airflow around the orbiter. The crew module was an all-metal, welded, pressurised compartment housing the crew's workplaces, control, and life support systems. It had three decks. The flight deck, known as the Command Compartment (KO), was the workspace for the crew and served to accommodate the commander, pilot, engineer and mission specialist's seats, as well as
10850-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
11005-498: The cancellation of Mir -2, though only after its base block, DOS-8 , had been constructed. Similar budgetary difficulties were faced by other nations with space station projects, which prompted the US government to negotiate with European states, Russia, Japan, and Canada in the early 1990s to begin a collaborative project. In June 1992, American president George H. W. Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed to cooperate on space exploration . The resulting Agreement between
11160-459: The capability to use the Luch data relay satellite system (which fell into disrepair in the 1990s) and the network of Soviet tracking ships deployed in various locations around the world (which also became unavailable in the 1990s). UHF radio was used by cosmonauts conducting EVAs . UHF was also employed by other spacecraft that docked to or undocked from the station, such as Soyuz, Progress, and
11315-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
11470-476: The core module. Crews were also provided with rinse-less shampoo and edible toothpaste to save water. On a 1998 visit to Mir , bacteria and larger organisms were found to have proliferated in water globules formed from moisture that had condensed behind service panels. The station provided two permanent crew quarters, the Kayutkas , phonebox-sized booths set towards the rear of the core module, each featuring
11625-423: The core module. The VDU's increased distance from Mir' s axis allowed an 85% decrease in fuel consumption, reducing the amount of propellant required to orient the station. A second girder, Rapana , was mounted aft of Sofora on Kvant -1. This girder, a small prototype of a structure intended to be used on Mir -2 to hold large parabolic dishes away from the main station structure, was 5 metres long and used as
11780-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
11935-417: The crews began preparing for their evening meal at about 19:00. The cosmonauts were free to do as they wished in the evening, and largely worked to their own pace during the day. In their spare time, crews were able to catch up with work, observe the Earth below, respond to letters, drawings, and other items brought from Earth (and give them an official stamp to show they had been aboard Mir ), or make use of
12090-404: The day to aid assimilation. Canned food such as jellied beef tongue was placed into a niche in the core module's table, where it could be warmed in 5–10 minutes. Usually, crews drank tea, coffee and fruit juices, but, unlike the ISS, the station also had a supply of cognac and vodka for special occasions. In the 1990s ninety species of micro-organisms were found inside Mir , four years after
12245-427: The descent into the atmosphere, return to the launch site , and horizontal landing on a runway. After making an automated approach to Site 251 , Buran touched down under its own control at 06:24:42 UTC and came to a stop at 06:25:24, 206 minutes after launch. Under a crosswind of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), Buran landed 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from
12400-416: The descent. The descent profile covered 8,000 kilometres (4,300 nmi) through the atmosphere during the approach and eventually slowed down from 28,000 kilometres per hour (15,000 kn) to zero. The first Buran flight was notable for the automatic landing system electing to perform an unlikely (estimated 3% probability) maneuver at the 20 kilometres (66,000 ft) key point, which was needed to extend
12555-547: The detailed itineraries provided by ground control. Every second on board was accounted for and all activities were timetabled. After working some time on Mir , Linenger came to feel that the order in which his activities were allocated did not represent the most logical or efficient order possible for these activities. He decided to perform his tasks in an order that he felt enabled him to work more efficiently, be less fatigued, and suffer less from stress. Linenger noted that his comrades on Mir did not "improvise" in this way, and as
12710-553: The end, it had been visited by 104 different people from twelve different nations , making it the most visited spacecraft in history (a record later surpassed by the ISS ). Due to pressure to launch the station on schedule, mission planners were left without Soyuz spacecraft or modules to launch to the station at first. It was decided to launch Soyuz T-15 on a dual mission to both Mir and Salyut 7 . Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov first docked with Mir on 15 March 1986. During their nearly 51-day stay on Mir , they brought
12865-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
13020-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
13175-514: The four modules mentioned above, no engines of its own, was launched attached to a tug based on the TKS spacecraft which delivered the module to the aft end of the core module instead of the docking node. Once hard docking had been achieved, the tug undocked and deorbited itself. The docking module, meanwhile, was launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-74 and mated to the orbiter's Orbiter Docking System . Atlantis then docked, via
13330-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
13485-438: The glide distance and bleed excessive energy. The standard approach was from the south and consisted of two left turns onto the final approach course. Instead, it performed additional turns in both directions and overflew the field to its northern side, before making a right turn back onto the final course. The landing system elected to perform the maneuver as the orbiter's energy didn't decrease enough due to strong-gusty winds in
13640-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
13795-491: The minimisation of movement on board the station, and so Mir would be oriented in a gravity gradient attitude for stability. Prior to the arrival of the modules containing these gyrodynes, the station's attitude was controlled using thrusters located on the core module alone, and, in an emergency, the thrusters on docked Soyuz spacecraft could be used to maintain the station's orientation. Radio communications provided telemetry and scientific data links between Mir and
13950-522: The mission, one or two manipulator arms. The Onboard Manipulator System was not installed for 1K's orbital flight. To expand Buran 's capabilities, pressurized modules similar to ESA's Spacelab were designed based on the 37K design . These modules had to be both compartments to conduct experiments and logistics volume, and could be mounted either in the payload bay and connected to the crew cabin via tunnel, or be temporarily docked to Mir 's Kristall radial docking port. On Buran 's maiden flight,
14105-422: The module would be launched independently on its own Proton-K and chase the station automatically. It would then dock to the forward docking port on the core module's docking node, then extend its Lyappa arm to mate with a fixture on the node's exterior. The arm would then lift the module away from the forward docking port and rotate it on to the radial port where it was to mate, before lowering it to dock. The node
14260-414: The module, to Kristall , then left the module behind when it undocked later in the mission. Various other external components, including three truss structures, several experiments and other unpressurised elements were also mounted to the exterior of the station by cosmonauts conducting a total of eighty spacewalks over the course of the station's history. The station's assembly marked the beginning of
14415-403: The module, with associated equipment within, used for Earth observations experiments, as was most of the other equipment on Priroda , including various radiometers and scan platforms. Kvant -2 also featured several scan platforms and was fitted with a mounting bracket to which the cosmonaut manoeuvring unit , or Ikar , was mated. This backpack was designed to assist cosmonauts in moving around
14570-612: The modules, and the VDU thruster used for roll control mounted to the Sofora girder) were used to attain the new attitude and the CMGs were reengaged. This was done fairly regularly depending on experimental needs; for instance, Earth or astronomical observations required that the instrument recording images be continuously aimed at the target, and so the station was oriented to make this possible. Conversely, materials processing experiments required
14725-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
14880-751: The mutant fungi being a major microbiological hazard for humans, and reaching Earth in the splashdown, after having been in an isolated environment for 15 years. Mir was visited by a total of 28 long-duration or "principal" crews, each of which was given a sequential expedition number formatted as EO-X. Expeditions varied in length (from the 72-day flight of the crew of EO-28 to the 437-day flight of Valeri Polyakov ), but generally lasted around six months. Principal expedition crews consisted of two or three crew members, who often launched as part of one expedition but returned with another (Polyakov launched with EO-14 and landed with EO-17). The principal expeditions were often supplemented with visiting crews who remained on
15035-472: The new Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA). As a result, most of the station's occupants were Soviet; through international collaborations such as the Interkosmos , Euromir and Shuttle– Mir programmes, the station was made accessible to space travellers from several Asian, European and North American nations. Mir was deorbited in March 2001 after funding was cut off. The cost of the Mir programme
15190-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
15345-482: The operator of the Onboard Manipulator System. The middeck or Habitation Compartment (BO), served as the living and sleeping quarters for the crew. It contained lockers, a galley, sleeping bags, and a toilet, in addition to three instrument bays with radio equipment and thermal control systems. Up to six crew members could be seated in the middeck during launch and reentry. The lower deck, known as
15500-421: The optimum angle predicted for reacquiring the Sun once the station passed out of the shadow. The batteries, each of 60 Ah capacity, were then used to power the station until the arrays recovered their maximum output on the day side of Earth. The solar arrays themselves were launched and installed over a period of eleven years, more slowly than originally planned, with the station continually suffering from
15655-664: The orbiter's own liquid-propellant engines fuelled from a large tank, the Soviet/Russian Energia launch system used thrust from each booster's RD-170 liquid oxygen/kerosene engine (each with four nozzles), developed by Valentin Glushko , and another four RD-0120 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines attached to the central block. The only orbital launch of a Buran-class orbiter, 1K1 (1К1: first orbiter, first flight) occurred at 03:00:02 UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad 110/37 . Buran
15810-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
15965-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
16120-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
16275-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
16430-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
16585-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
16740-415: The pressurised modules, Mir featured several external components. The largest component was the Sofora girder, a large scaffolding-like structure consisting of 20 segments which, when assembled, projected 14 metres from its mount on Kvant -1. A self-contained thruster block, the VDU (Vynosnaya Dvigatyelnaya Ustanovka), was mounted on the end of Sofora and was used to augment the roll-control thrusters on
16895-579: The program. Orbital maneuvering was provided by the Joint Propulsion System ( Объединенная Двигательная Установка ). The initial design of the orbiter included two Saturn AL-31 jet engines in special nacelles either side of the tailfin, which could be used in the final phase of reentry to modify the approach path. Mock-up nacelles were installed on test articles OK-ML1 and OK-MT and aerodynamic analogue OK-GLI used four such AL-31 engines to perform powered atmospheric flight tests, however
17050-592: The programme was consolidated with Vladimir Chelomei 's crewed Almaz military space station programme. The docking ports were reinforced to accommodate 20-tonne (22-short-ton) space station modules based on the TKS spacecraft . NPO Energia was responsible for the overall space station, with work subcontracted to KB Salyut , due to ongoing work on the Energia rocket and Salyut 7 , Soyuz-T , and Progress spacecraft . KB Salyut began work in 1979, and drawings were released in 1982 and 1983. New systems incorporated into
17205-452: The project continued until its scheduled completion in 1998. Eleven Space Shuttle missions, a joint Soyuz flight, and almost 1000 cumulative days in space for US astronauts occurred over the course of seven long-duration expeditions. Inside, the 130-tonne (140-short-ton) Mir resembled a cramped labyrinth , crowded with hoses, cables and scientific instruments—as well as articles of everyday life, such as photos, children's drawings, books and
17360-479: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
17515-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
17670-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
17825-480: The second launch attempt, on 19 February 1986 at 21:28:23 UTC, was successful, meeting the political deadline. The orbital assembly of Mir began on 19 February 1986 with the launch of the Proton-K rocket. Four of the six modules which were later added ( Kvant -2 in 1989, Kristall in 1990, Spektr in 1995 and Priroda in 1996) followed the same sequence to be added to the main Mir complex. Firstly,
17980-552: The sink, toilet, and condensation from the air. The Elektron system generated oxygen electrolytically , venting hydrogen to space. Bottled oxygen and solid fuel oxygen generation (SFOG) canisters, a system known as Vika , provided backup. Carbon dioxide was removed from the air by the Vozdukh system. Other byproducts of human metabolism, such as methane from the intestines and ammonia from sweat, were removed by activated charcoal filters. Similar systems are presently used on
18135-545: The station and the planned Buran in a manner similar to the US Manned Maneuvering Unit , but it was only used once, during EO-5 . In addition to module-specific equipment, Kvant -2, Kristall , Spektr and Priroda were each equipped with one Lyappa arm , a robotic arm which, after the module had docked to the core module's forward port, grappled one of two fixtures positioned on the core module's docking node. The arriving module's docking probe
18290-475: The station between 1994 and 1995. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years out of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, or larger crews for short visits. Following the success of the Salyut programme , Mir represented the next stage in the Soviet Union's space station programme. The first module of the station, known as the core module or base block,
18445-482: The station constantly lost altitude because of slight atmospheric drag , it needed to be boosted to a higher altitude several times each year. This boost was generally performed by Progress resupply vessels, although during the Shuttle- Mir programme the task was performed by US Space Shuttles, and, prior to the arrival of Kvant-1 , the engines on the core module could also accomplish the task. Attitude control
18600-476: The station during the week-long handover period between one crew and the next before returning with the departing crew, the station's life support system being able to support a crew of up to six for short periods. The station was occupied for a total of four distinct periods; 12 March–16 July 1986 ( EO-1 ), 5 February 1987 – 27 April 1989 (EO-2–EO-4), the record-breaking run from 5 September 1989 – 28 August 1999 (EO-5–EO-27), and 4 April–16 June 2000 ( EO-28 ). By
18755-638: The station included the Salyut 5B digital flight control computer and gyrodyne flywheels (taken from Almaz), Kurs automatic rendezvous system , Luch satellite communications system, Elektron oxygen generators, and Vozdukh carbon dioxide scrubbers . By early 1984, work on Mir had halted while all resources were being put into the Buran programme in order to prepare the Buran spacecraft for flight testing. Funding resumed in early 1984 when Valentin Glushko
18910-399: The station's ham radio. Two amateur radio call signs, U1MIR and U2MIR, were assigned to Mir in the late 1980s , allowing amateur radio operators on Earth to communicate with the cosmonauts. The station was also equipped with a supply of books and films for the crew to read and watch. NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger related how life on board Mir was structured and lived according to
19065-410: The station's launch. By the time of its decommission in 2001, the number of known different micro-organisms had grown to 140. As space stations get older, the problems with contamination get worse. Molds that develop aboard space stations can produce acids that degrade metal, glass and rubber. The molds in Mir were found growing behind panels and inside air-conditioning equipment. The molds also caused
19220-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
19375-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
19530-406: The systems testing and integration there. The module arrived at the launch site on 6 May, with 1100 of 2500 cables requiring rework based on the results of tests to the ground test model at Khrunichev . In October, the base block was rolled outside its cleanroom to carry out communications tests. The first launch attempt on 16 February 1986 was scrubbed when the spacecraft communications failed, but
19685-416: The target mark. It was the first spaceplane to perform an uncrewed flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. It was later found that Buran had lost eight of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of its flight. In 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an uncrewed second flight by 1993, with a duration of 15–20 days. However, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to funding drying up and
19840-574: The third generation of space station design, being the first to consist of more than one primary spacecraft (thus opening a new era in space architecture ). First generation stations such as Salyut 1 and Skylab had monolithic designs, consisting of one module with no resupply capability; the second generation stations Salyut 6 and Salyut 7 comprised a monolithic station with two ports to allow consumables to be replenished by cargo spacecraft such as Progress . The capability of Mir to be expanded with add-on modules meant that each could be designed with
19995-462: The tiles helped dissipate heat, and, similarly to the tiles used in the Space Shuttle, the Buran tiles were glued to the orbiter. The sides of the heat tiles facing the orbiter were left uncoated to equalize the material pressure with the surroundings, preventing additional mechanical loads. There were deliberate gaps between tiles to allow for thermal expansion. The gaps were filled with quartz fiber , rope, alkaline elements, inserts and brush seals, and
20150-433: The tiles were also waterproofed. The Buran and Space Shuttle orbiters were exposed to similar temperatures, and both had similar levels of insulation. Compared to the Space Shuttle, Buran had a different tile layout on its underside, in which all gaps between heat tiles are parallel or perpendicular to the direction of airflow through the orbiter's lower surface. This layout was designed to reduce heat in between tiles, and in
20305-424: The time required to set up, use, and stow. The shower, which featured a plastic curtain and fan to collect water via an airflow, was later converted into a steam room; it eventually had its plumbing removed and the space was reused. When the shower was unavailable, crew members washed using wet wipes, with soap dispensed from a toothpaste tube-like container, or using a washbasin equipped with a plastic hood, located in
20460-647: The tube so both men and women could use the same toilet. Waste was collected and transferred to the Water Recovery System, where it could be recycled back into drinking water, but was usually used to produce oxygen via the Elektron system. Mir featured a shower, the Bania , located in Kvant -2. It was an improvement on the units installed in previous Salyut stations, but proved difficult to use due to
20615-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
20770-511: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
20925-546: The weight of the orbiter, while another 11% of weight was added by payload systems and removable parts. The wings of the orbiter contained elevators which could be deflected from +35° to −20°. The lower surface of the Buran orbiter was covered in 38,600 carbon-carbon heat shielding tiles designed to withstand 100 reentries. These tiles were very similar to the ones on the US Space Shuttle . The tiles had an antioxidant molybdenum disilicide coating. The black coating in
21080-471: Was Moscow Time (MSK; UTC+03 ). The windows were covered during night hours to give the impression of darkness because the station experienced 16 sunrises and sunsets a day. A typical day for the crew began with a wake-up at 08:00 MSK, followed by two hours of personal hygiene and breakfast. Work was conducted from 10:00 until 13:00, followed by an hour of exercise and an hour's lunch break. Three more hours of work and another hour of exercise followed lunch, and
21235-413: Was maintained at an orbit between 296 km (184 mi) and 421 km (262 mi) altitude and travelled at an average speed of 27,700 km/h (17,200 mph), completing 15.7 orbits per day. The station was launched as part of the Soviet Union's crewed spaceflight programme effort to maintain a long-term research outpost in space, and following the collapse of the USSR, was operated by
21390-405: Was also made available to governments of countries such as France and India. Only the last three of the programme's fourteen missions consisted of an expedition to Mir but none resulted in an extended stay in the station: Various European astronauts visited Mir as part of several cooperative programmes: In the early 1980s, NASA planned to launch a modular space station called Freedom as
21545-641: Was connected to the socket that had previously been occupied by the core module's dorsal panel, which was by this point barely supplying 1 kW. The other panel, originally intended to be launched on Priroda , replaced the Kristall panel on Kvant -1 in November 1997, completing the station's electrical system. Mir was maintained in a near circular orbit with an average perigee of 354 km (220 mi) and an average apogee of 374 km (232 mi), travelling at an average speed of 27,700 km/h (17,200 mph) and completing 15.7 orbits per day. As
21700-423: Was equipped with only two Konus drogues, which were required for dockings. This meant that, prior to the arrival of each new module, the node would have to be depressurised to allow spacewalking cosmonauts to manually relocate the drogue to the next port to be occupied. The other two expansion modules, Kvant -1 in 1987 and the docking module in 1995, followed different procedures. Kvant -1, having, unlike
21855-466: Was estimated by former RKA General Director Yuri Koptev in 2001 as $ 4.2 billion over its lifetime (including development, assembly and orbital operation). Mir was authorised by a 17 February 1976 decree, to design an improved model of the Salyut DOS-17K space stations. Four Salyut space stations had been launched since 1971, with three more being launched during Mir' s development. It
22010-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
22165-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
22320-421: Was launched in 1986 and followed by six further modules. Proton rockets were used to launch all of its components except for the docking module , which was installed by US Space Shuttle mission STS-74 in 1995. When complete, the station consisted of seven pressurised modules and several unpressurised components. Power was provided by several photovoltaic arrays attached directly to the modules. The station
22475-575: Was launched with two collapsible, 15 m (49.2 ft) long arrays (providing 4 kW each) which were intended to be moved to Kvant -1 and installed on mounts which were attached during a spacewalk by the EO-8 crew in 1991. This relocation was begun in 1995, when the panels were retracted and the left panel installed on Kvant -1. By this time all the arrays had degraded and were supplying much less power. To rectify this, Spektr (launched in 1995), which had initially been designed to carry two arrays,
22630-657: Was lifted into space, on an uncrewed mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket. The automated launch sequence performed as specified, and the Energia rocket lifted the vehicle into a temporary orbit before the orbiter separated as programmed. After boosting itself to a higher orbit and completing two orbits around the Earth, the ODU ( Russian : Объединенная Двигательная Установка , romanized : Ob"yedinennaya Dvigatel'naya Ustanovka , lit. 'Combined Propulsion System') engines fired automatically to begin
22785-470: Was maintained by a combination of two mechanisms; in order to hold a set attitude, a system of twelve control moment gyroscopes (CMGs, or "gyrodynes") rotating at 10,000 rpm kept the station oriented, six CMGs being located in each of the Kvant-1 and Kvant-2 modules. When the attitude of the station needed to be changed, the gyrodynes were disengaged, thrusters (including those mounted directly to
22940-556: Was modified to hold four, providing a total of 126 m (1360 ft ) of array with a 16 kW supply. Two further arrays were flown to the station on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-74 , carried on the docking module. The first of these, the Mir cooperative solar array, consisted of American photovoltaic cells mounted on a Russian frame. It was installed on the unoccupied mount on Kvant -1 in May 1996 and
23095-489: Was not perfect, being disturbed by five separate effects: Mir 's environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) provided or controlled atmospheric pressure , fire detection, oxygen levels, waste management and water supply. The highest priority for the ECLSS was the station's atmosphere, but the system also collected, processed, and stored waste and water produced and used by the crew—a process that recycles fluid from
23250-536: Was ordered by the Central Committee 's Secretary for Space and Defence to orbit Mir by early 1986, in time for the 27th Communist Party Congress . It was clear that the planned processing flow could not be followed and still meet the 1986 launch date. It was decided on Cosmonaut's Day (12 April) 1985 to ship the flight model of the base block to the Baikonur Cosmodrome and conduct
23405-440: Was planned that the station's core module ( DOS-7 and the backup DOS-8 ) would be equipped with a total of four docking ports; two at either end of the station as with the Salyut stations, and an additional two ports on either side of a docking sphere at the front of the station to enable further modules to expand the station's capabilities. By August 1978, this had evolved to the final configuration of one aft port and five ports in
23560-441: Was rolled out. Over 1,000 companies all over the Soviet Union were involved in construction and development. The Buran spacecraft was made to be launched on the Soviet Union's super-heavy lift vehicle, Energia. The Buran program ended in 1993. The Buran orbiter was built around the airframe, which was its main structural component, since all other components were attached to it. The components necessary for flight made up about 20% of
23715-493: Was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It had a greater mass than any previous spacecraft . At the time it was the largest artificial satellite in orbit, succeeded by the International Space Station (ISS) after Mir 's orbit decayed . The station served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology , human biology , physics , astronomy , meteorology , and spacecraft systems with
23870-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
24025-421: Was then retracted, and the arm raised the module so that it could be pivoted 90° for docking to one of the four radial docking ports. Photovoltaic (PV) arrays powered Mir . The station used a 28 volt DC supply which provided 5-, 10-, 20- and 50- amp taps. When the station was illuminated by sunlight, several solar arrays mounted on the pressurised modules provided power to Mir' s systems and charged
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