`Mir' hurtles into Pacific

After all the hype of recent weeks the life of the Russian space station, Mir, ended with a spectacular orange glow in the South Pacific above the islands of Fiji just before 6 a.m. Irish time yesterday.

The splashdown marked the end of 15 years of Soviet space history with the craft having been blasted into orbit just a few short weeks before former Soviet president, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, began perestroika and two months before the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded.

But in a unforeseen twist, the former beacon of communist space exploration proved something of a publicity coup for US corporate giants Taco Bell.

Earlier this week the fast food outlet used a barge to tow a 100 square metre target out to sea off the east coast of Australia with the message "Free Taco Here" in huge purple lettering. The company said if any section of the space station hit the target, it would give one free Taco to each of America's 280 million citizens. The debris, travelling at 1 km per second, missed and the company was saved the massive payout.

The emergency services in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the islands of the South Pacific had been briefed and were on high alert in case any of the 135 tonne hulk strayed off path and hit land.

In the event, they need not have bothered - 15 years of Soviet space history ended exactly as planned with the remains of the world's most celebrated and, at times, hapless space station coming to rest in its watery grave without incident.

A handful of stargazers in Fiji saw the remains of the station as it hurtled into the ocean, as did the crew of a Sunflower Air flight which was 2,500 metres above Fiji's capital, Suva, at the time of splashdown.

"It was at very high altitude and very high speed," the pilot, Mr Neli Vuatalevu, said.

"It was very bright, had a long tail of smoke, which remained in the atmosphere for several minutes. We were in bright sun, but it was very much brighter than that," he said.

The only others believed to have seen the light show were crew members on board a fleet of American Samoan fishing boats and other opportunistic sailors who had gone to the area in hope of salvaging any wreckage they could.

Space experts said it would fetch huge prices from enthusiasts.

On board were over 100 books left over the years by crew members, a Bible, a Koran, running shoes and an old photograph of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

Some mutant fungi that had thrived in the weightless conditions high above the world were also part of the cargo on board the obsolete station.

In the last 48 hours, the authorities in New Zealand had tried unsuccessfully to contact the sailors to insist they leave the area for fear they would be hit by flying debris. Up to 1,500 fragments were expected to survive re-entry, a handful of which were expected to be the size of a small car.

Perhaps most concerned were the Australians, and with some justification given their somewhat worrying history of being hit from the skies.

In 1979, NASA's 77.5 tonne Skylab, after six years in space crashed into the Indian Ocean spraying debris across Western Australia. Nobody was killed but the sonic boom from the pieces woke sheep farmers from their sleep. In 1989, a Soviet Cosmos satellite fell in Central Australia. Again, nobody was injured.