The Russian space station Mir, ('peace'), in orbit. Mir was launched February 1986. The space station orginally consisted of a core module and docking facilities. A variety of science modules were then adding, increasing Mir's mass from its original 21 tonnes to over 100 tonnes. The orange module at bottom center was used to dock with the American space shuttle. This image was taken from the shuttle Atlantis after it had undocked from the space station as part of mission STS-79 during 09/16/96-09/26/96.