The technical specification for the creation of the devices was prepared by the head of the Department of Deep-sea Habitable Vehicles of the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, project manager Igor Mikhaltsev.

The main ideas on the design of the submarines, the arrangement of its individual systems, nodes, elements, and the acquisition of scientific and navigation equipment belong to I. E. Mikhaltsev, his deputy A.M. Sagalevich and the chief engineer of the project from the Finnish shipbuilding company Sauli Ruohonen, who headed a group of Finnish engineers and technicians who participated in the construction of the submarines.

In a later interview with STT the then Rauma-Repola department head Peter Laxell said he believed that "Finland got the permit to deliver the crafts to the Soviets on the basis that the CoCom officials in the USA believed the project would be a failure ... Once it became clear to them we actually had accomplished the engineering feat there was a huge uproar about how such technology could be sold to the Soviets, enough for many visits to the Pentagon.

For example, one concern of the Pentagon was the possibility that the Soviet Union would manufacture a pioneer submarine fleet that could clear the ocean floor of US deep sea listening equipment.

[1] With the possibility of losing its lucrative offshore oil platforms market Rauma-Repola yielded, and submarine development ceased in Finland.

[4] In 1998 the Mirs were utilized in the filming and photography of the sunken Japanese submarine I-52 for a National Geographic television special and a magazine article.

Aboard the Russian R/V Keldysh for over five weeks in the mid-Atlantic, the film crew documented the search by treasure seeker Paul Tidwell for the alleged two tons of gold that was on the I-52's cargo manifest.

Director of photography William Mills and National Geographic photographer Jonathan Blair made multiple dives in Mir-1 and Mir-2 alongside their Russian pilots Anatoly Sagalevich in Mir-1 and Yevgeny Chernyaev in Mir-2, to a depth of 5240 metres, a mile and a half deeper than the Titanic wreck.

The earlier discovery of the wreck was made possible through the work of Tom Detweller and David W. Jourdan and their team at Nauticos, LLC.

On June 12, 2017, a part of the expedition aired on PBS series Painting and Travel with Roger and Sarah Bansemer in episode 12, Journey to Titanic.

On August 2, 2007, Russia used the Mir submersibles to perform the first manned descent to the seabed under the Geographic North Pole, to a depth of 4,261 m, to scientifically research the region in relation to the 2001 Russian territorial claim.

The Mir-2 crew were international: Russian pilot Yevgeny Chernyaev; Australian Mike McDowell; Swede Frederik Paulsen.

They had shown this hours before the Mir submersibles had arrived on the Arctic seabed, and they had pointed out that the footage was from the movie, not a transmission from the site.