Mir's core module was launched on 19 February 1986. The space station was largely assembled while in orbit and had many short-term visitors (about a week aboard Mir) as well as many long-term crew members (from 6 months up to Valeri Polyakov's 14 month stay at the space station beginning in January 1994, which still holds the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a single person).
Many of the crew who visited Mir used different spacecraft to launch than they did to land; the first such examples were Aleksandr Viktorenko and Muhammed Faris who flew up in Soyuz TM-3 (launched 22 July 1987) and landed a week later in Soyuz TM-2 on 30 July 1987. The largest crew aboard Mir simultaneously (not including the NASA Space Shuttle missions) was 6, which first occurred with the launch of Soyuz TM-7 on 26 November 1988 and lasted for just over three weeks. Mir existed until 23 March 2001. At that day it was deliberately de-orbited and broke apart during atmospheric reentry.
