Now I feel a whole lot better. NOT!

Final preparations made for Mir crash landing

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/nat/newsnat-22mar2001-30.htm

An Australian emergency coordination group has made its final preparations for the fall of the Russian Mir space station tomorrow afternoon.

Mir has reached its designated low orbit, ahead of its controlled plunge into the South Pacific more than 5,000 kilometres to the east of Australia.

Australia's Defence Ministry has been communicating with the Russian and US space agencies as it prepares a national contingency plan in case Mir runs off-course on re-entry.

The emergency group's director general, David Templeman, says Australia will have about one hour's notice should something go wrong.

However, Mr Templeman says such a scenario is extremely unlikely.

"It's important to make the comparison with Skylab," he said.

"Skylab was an uncontrolled event. This is a controlled event.

"The issue is that we're dealing with a very significant management-controlled situation here, compared with something just falling out of the sky."