On February 19, 1986 within a month of the grounding of the American space program after the Challenger explosion, The Soviet Union boosted into orbit the first permanently  named it Mir which means "the Salyuts, which went unoccupied for long stretches between changes of crew Mir would nearly always have a crew on board.

Mir is 17m ( 56ft.) long and 4m (13ft.) wide-about 5m (16ft.) longer and slightly wider than Salyut 7. It has two large solar panels that soviet flight commander Leonid Kizim said made it look like a " white winged sea gull soaring above the world. " It's solar panels are about 2 times the size of the ones on Salyut 7. One important feature of Mir is that it has 6 docking ports. Like Salyut 6 and 7, there are ports at opposite ends of the station. One port is intended for use with progress we supply cargo space craft. The port at the other end serves as the entry way for crew coming on board from Soyuz spacecraft. For additional ports point perpendicularly to the space station. Those are used for additional space station parts.

The space station now at year 2000 is not in service.