The successor to the Salyut 7 space station was the Mir space station, which had a three-letter acronym of MIR. The Mir space station was a modular space station that was assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996. It was the first consistently inhabited long-term research station in orbit and held the record for the longest continuous human presence in space at just under 10 years. The Mir space station was deorbited in 2001.