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

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.