On This Day in Space! May 12, 2000: Last spacewalk at Mir space station, ,

On May 12, 2000, two Russian cosmonauts embarked on the 80th and final spacewalk at the Mir space station. 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.

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The Russian space station Mir as seen from NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour during a Shuttle/Mir mission on Jan. 29, 1998. (Image credit: NASA)

MirCorp decided to lease Mir from the government so they could use it for space tourism. The two cosmonauts spent about 5 hours repairing damages and conducting tests outside the station. They also inspected the station’s external hardware to look for signs of wear and tear.

This was all done in preparation for commercial crew missions that never happened, because Russia deorbited the Mir space station the following year.

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