Mir's achievements take pride of place in the history of Soviet space travel, second only to the the great technological and diplomatic coup of making Yuri Gagarin the first man in space in 1961.

The space station sent 103 people into orbit, including 62 foreigners.

Russian Valeriy Poliakov holds the space endurance record, having spent 15 months on end aboard Mir.

The Mir team of Russians Viktor Afanassyev and Sergei Avdeyev and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Haignere will touch down at dawn Saturday in the Kazakhstan steppes.

At a cost of $ 250 million per year, the Mir station has now become an expensive luxury for cash-strapped Russia, which is also a key player in the planned International Space Station (ISS) which will cost $ 300 million per year.

A months-long searchfor private funding has yielded nothing. Appeals to the public launched by Communist deputies in June was similarly unsuccessful.

Moreover, recent missions have been plagued by technical glitches as Mir's aging technology and hardware become less reliable.

``It is better to bring the station down in the Pacific Ocean with honours than to prolong its flight until there are serious problems that could ruin the record of this unique example of Russian space technology,'' an official with the Russian space agency said in July.

The scientists and cosmonauts here are hoping to further their Mir experience with the ISS, which should be ready for its first team, two Russians and an American, in early 2000.

The history of the veteran Mir station begins in 1981 when the Soviet Union decided to replace the uncomfortable space capsules which had previously been sent up, giving the cosmonauts the chance to carry out more scientific experiments over a longer period of time.

When the Franco-Russian team leaves thespace station for the homeward journey on Friday they will put Mir on an automatic setting and it will orbit empty until February.

Then a team will spend a month on board, their sole task to prepare to swing the space station out of its regular orbit. That team will return to earth in late March.

Mir will be taken out of its orbit at the end of April and will disintegrate upon re-entry to the earth's atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.