The planned fall to earth of the fabled Russian space station Mir in the next 24 hours will be captured on a delayed broadcast over the Internet for all the world to see.
Sponsors ranging from RadioShack to AOL and Internet auction site eBay, pulled together by attorney Richard Citron and his space industry businessman brother Bob Citron, will track the splashdown, which ends 15 years of Mir's circling the globe.
The broadcast, four hours after re-entry, will be shown on www.mirreentry.com.
Moscow's latest plan is to bring the space station down on Friday, somewhere around 3,000 km east of New Zealand's southern tip.
Two-thirds of the accident-prone Mir should burn up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
Moscow has taken out US$200 million in insurance in case its plans to dump Mir harmlessly in the Pacific go awry.
But from Easter Island to Fiji, residents and governments of the South Pacific micro states are on alert.
Australia and New Zealand are monitoring the path and have contingency plans in place, officials said, while airlines would be informed of the space station's position in case they had to reschedule flights across the Pacific.
