Mir Has Two Faces

Mir may be the Russian word for "peace," but when the space station of that name was launched in February 1986 peace seemed well out of sight. The threat of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and America was still very real.

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• Baikonur
• Shannon Lucid
• Space Technology
• Science and Technology

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But times have changed, which is the focus of the IMAX film Mission to Mir. Besides covering the station itself, it shows the American astronauts' cooperation with the Russian cosmonauts on Mir, the first continuously occupied space station, which ended with its destruction during a controlled re-entry into the atmosphere.

The opening scene of Mission to Mir takes place on Earth, however, as we witness a Russian Soyuz rocket being wheeled onto a launching pad at a once super-secret launch site at Baikonur. Even now, after the Cold War is over, the feeling lingers that we are seeing something we shouldn't. In fact, the site was so secret its location only recently appeared on maps.

The fact that foreign cameras were allowed to document the event is a bold enough statement in itself, but soon the viewers are getting to know the cosmonauts as they share duties and training with astronauts at the Russian training center called Star City, in Houston and on Mir itself. One astronaut mentions how, at one time, astronauts and cosmonauts were separated by a line that neither one was supposed to cross in their respective warplanes. Now he is striving to learn the Russian language so he can share the moment with his counterparts when they first view Earth from outer space.

Astronaut Shannon Lucid recounts how a small-town girl from Oklahoma, who grew up in the '50s learning to fear the Russians as an enemy, grew up to spend 188 days--a record among Americans--in the Russian space station. She probably never imagined her nostrils would be projected to the size of bowling balls on a huge IMAX screen either.