Mir

A nuclear warhead platform is a weapons delivery device that orbits a planet. On Earth in the late 20th century, the United States planned to launch its own orbital warhead in response to other world powers that had already deployed similar platforms. According to Enterprise Science officer Spock, "the sky was full of orbiting H-bombs," in the late 1960s. Captain Kirk understood these to be one of Earth's greatest problems during that era.

This opinion was shared by the unidentified race that sent Gary Seven to Earth in 1968. It was their plan to cause the the warhead to malfunction and detonate approximately 100 miles above the planet's surface in order to frighten the Earth's governments away from using such weapons. Seven commented that planet Omicron IV nearly destroyed itself over similar "nonsense."

History records that the United States space agency, NASA, did launch such a platform in 1968 from McKinley Rocket Base. While not generally revealed, a malfunctioning suborbital warhead detonated exactly 104 miles above Earth's surface on the same date. (TOS: "Assignment: Earth")

Mir (Russian: Мир, which can mean both Peace and World) was a Soviet (and later Russian) orbital station. Mir was the world's first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space, and the first 'third generation' type space station, constructed over a number of years with a modular design.

Mir holds the record for longest continuous human presence in space at eight days short of 10 years, and, through a number of collaborations, was made internationally accessible to cosmonauts and astronauts of many countries (program Intercosmos). The most notable of these, the Shuttle-Mir Program, saw American Space Shuttles visiting the station eleven times, bringing supplies and providing crew rotation. Mir was assembled in orbit by successively connecting several modules, each launched separately from 1986 to 1996.

The station existed until 23 March 2001, when it was deliberately de-orbited, breaking apart during atmospheric re-entry over the South Pacific Ocean.