[originaltext] Remnants of Russia’s Mir space station plunged into the Pacifi

Remnants of Russia’s Mir space station plunged into the Pacific Ocean on Friday, thundering spectacularly over Fiji with a huge smoke trail after engineers ended the laboratory’s "triumphant" 15-year mission.
   Mission Control outside Moscow said a final signal at 12:07 a. m. EST switched on engines for a 20-minute burst that irrevocably altered the station’s trajectory, pitching it into a designated splashdown zone in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
   "We saw five or six fragments with a huge smoke trail that lasted for 10 to 15 seconds. (It was) followed some time later by a couple of sonic booms," said Reuters photographer Mark Baker from Nadi in the South Pacific islands of Fiji. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
   Australian officials said they believed Mir—which means both "peace" and "world" in Russian--ended up in an unpopulated part of the Pacific some 1,800 miles southwest of Britain’ s Pitcairn Islands.
   "It occurred in the exact area that the Russian space agency had predicted, between Australia and Chile," said Emergency Management Australia managing director David Templeman, "I’m relieved."
   South Pacific nations had been on standby in case chunks hit land instead of water. A fleet of 27 tuna boats fishing in the target zone was not hit by any debris, a spokeswoman for the fleet, Tana McHale, told Reuters from California.