There's a satellite in my backyard! : MIR and the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects

In March 2001, Russia's Mir space station plummeted back to earth after 15 years in space. Despite well-publicised fears that the re-entry of the 135 tonne laboratory would be uncontrolled, the operation was an unqualified success. Approximately 30 tonnes of the remains of the once proud bastion of Russian space technology fell harmlessly as planned within the so-called 'Dead Zone' in the South Pacific, approximately 2 500 kilometres east of New Zealand. Its demise has heralded a new chapter in United States-Russian cooperation in space, as exemplified by their participation in the multi-nation US$60 billion Alpha International Space Station ('ISS') project, which is currently underway and expected to be completed by 2006. Yet it all could have turned out quite differently. Previous 'returns' by Soviet space objects have not gone so smoothly. The most notorious of these incidents involved the 1978 crash of one of its nuclear powered ocean surveillance satellites, Cosmos 954, which scattered debris over regions of northern Canada. In 1991, fragments of Mir's predecessor, the 40 tonne Salyut 7 space station, fell across a wide area of Argentina.