Mir, meaning “peace” in Russian, was an orbiting space station operated by the Soviet Union (and its successor government, Russia) from 1986 to 2001. Mir was launched in self-contained, attachable pieces called modules, and was literally put together in space one module at a time. The first (core) module was launched on February 19, 1986, from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. By 1996, when the seventh and last module was installed, Mir had become a multi-spoked cylinder more than one hundred feet long, had a mass of more than 120 tons, and had more than ten thousand cubic feet of living space.