The term 'OLD SOVIET ORBITER' refers to the MIR spacecraft, which was a Soviet-built modular space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001. It was the first truly modular space station and held the record for longest continuous human presence in space until the International Space Station surpassed it in 2010. MIR was the first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space and served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.