On February 19, 1986, the Soviet Union launched the Mir space station. Discover more space history 👉 https://space-com.visitlink.me/h15Vma While this wasn't the first space station launched into orbit, it was the first one that had to be assembled piece-by-piece in space. Mir enabled the first long-duration human spaceflight missions. The current record for the longest stay in space was set aboard the Mir space station by cosmonaut Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days i

On May 12, 2000, two Russian cosmonauts embarked on the 80th and final spacewalk at the Mir space station. Discover more space history 👉 https://trib.al/Hfc0uNo This was also the first commercially financed spacewalk. A private company called Mircorp paid to launch two cosmonauts, Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander Kalery, on the so-called "MirCorp Mission." The goal was to reactivate and repair the station after it had been deserted for eight months. MirCorp decided to lease Mir from the government