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Facts about MISSION TO MIR and the historic Shuttle-Mir project:
On May 21, 1997, MISSION TO MIR premieres at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
The making of MISSION TO MIR entailed four trips to Space Station Mir (one rendezvous and three docking flights).
Imax trained eight astronauts to operate the IMAX camera with each astronaut receiving a total of 25 hours of training.
For the four Imax-produced space films (THE DREAM IS ALIVE, BLUE PLANET, DESTINY IN SPACE and MISSION TO MIR), Imax Corporation has trained a total of 81 astronauts to to operate the cameras and IMAX cameras have flown aboard the space shuttle 16 times.
Mir is the Russian word for “peace.”
Mir orbits the Earth 16 times a day.
  Mir is composed of six modules that have been sectioned together since Russia launched the first one in February, 1986.
Although the Russians have lived and worked in seven space stations since 1971, Mir is the first long-term, continuously-occupied space station.
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The record for the longest amount of time a human has spent in space was set by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov during his 14-month stay aboard Mir.
Shannon Lucid’s record-breaking stay aboard Mir, from March 21 to September 24, 1996, made her the first American, man or woman, to live six months in space.
Mir is powered by the sun. Solar arrays convert solar rays to electricity, which is then stored and used when the station has orbited out of the sun's light.
While the space shuttle weighs a modest 100 tons, Mir checks in at more than 130 tons.
The space shuttle was specially designed for transporting materials to and from space. It can hold 65,000 pounds of materials depending upon the height of the orbit, while the vehicle used by the Russians to travel to Mir--the Soyuz--can only transport 15,000 pounds. This is one reason why Mir and the shuttle complement each other so well.
The space shuttle has a fuel cell that generated electricity and may take up to 2,000 pounds of water by-product to Mir on every trip.
On its return to Earth, the space shuttle actually begins its landing half way around the world from its final destination. The orbiter fires its engines to slow down over Australia and simply coasts the rest of the way to Florida.
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