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The company aiming to run the Mir space station as a business has announced
plans to raise $117 million on the world’s stock markets. Uncertainty has
shrouded Mir’s future after engineers at RSC Energia, the company which operates
Mir for the Russian government, apparently voted to ditch it in the ocean. But
its commercial partner MirCorp says its initial public offering shows the
station is a going concern. “I would say it looks like commercial optimism. No
one at MirCorp is ready to turn out the lights,” says MirCorp’s Jeffrey
Lenorovitz.