Interkosmos (Russian: Интеркосмос) was a Soviet space exploration programme which allowed members from foreign countries allied with the Soviet Union to participate in crewed and uncrewed space exploration missions. Participation was also made available to governments of countries such as France and India.
Only the last three of the programme's 14 missions consisted of an expedition to Mir but none resulted in an extended stay in the station:
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Abdul Ahad Mohmand – EP-3 (1988) Afghanistan
European involvement
Various European astronauts visited Mir as part of several cooperative programmes, on both the Soyuz and the Space Shuttle:
Jean-Loup Chrétien – Aragatz (1988) France
Helen Sharman – Project Juno (1991) UK
Franz Viehböck – Austromir '91 (1991) Austria
Klaus-Dietrich Flade – Mir '92 (1992) Germany
Michel Tognini – Antarès (1992) France
Jean-Pierre Haigneré – Altair (1993) France
Ulf Merbold – Euromir '94 (1994) Germany
Thomas Reiter – Euromir '95 (1995) Germany
Claudie Haigneré – Cassiopée (1996) France
Reinhold Ewald – Mir '97 (1997) Germany
Jean-François Clervoy – STS-84 (1997) France
Jean-Loup Chrétien – STS-86 (1997) France
Léopold Eyharts – Pégase (1998) France
Jean-Pierre Haigneré – Perseus (1999) France
Ivan Bella – Stefanik (1999) Slovakia
Shuttle–Mir program
In the early 1980s, NASA planned to launch a modular space station called Freedom as a counterpart to Mir, while the Soviets were planning to construct Mir-2 in the 1990s as a replacement for the station. Because of budget and design constraints, Freedom never progressed past mock-ups and minor component tests and, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Space Race, the project was nearly cancelled entirely by the United States House of Representatives. The post-Soviet economic chaos in Russia also led to the cancellation of Mir-2, though only after its base block, DOS-8, had been constructed. Similar budgetary difficulties were faced by other nations with space station projects, which prompted the US government to negotiate with European states, Russia, Japan, and Canada in the early 1990s to begin a collaborative project. In June 1992, American president George H. W. Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed to cooperate on space exploration. The resulting Agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes called for a short joint space programme with one American astronaut deployed to the Russian space station Mir and two Russian cosmonauts deployed to a Space Shuttle.
In September 1993, US vice president Al Gore Jr., and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin announced plans for a new space station, which eventually became the ISS. They also agreed, in preparation for this new project, that the United States would be heavily involved in the Mir programme as part of an international project known as the Shuttle–Mir Programme. The project, sometimes called "Phase One", was intended to allow the United States to learn from Russian experience in long-duration spaceflight and to foster a spirit of cooperation between the two nations and their space agencies, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). The project prepared the way for further cooperative space ventures, specifically, "Phase Two" of the joint project, the construction of the ISS. The programme was announced in 1993; the first mission started in 1994, and the project continued until its scheduled completion in 1998. Eleven Space Shuttle missions, a joint Soyuz flight, and almost 1000 cumulative days in space for US astronauts occurred over the course of seven long-duration expeditions.
Other visitors
Toyohiro Akiyama – Kosmoreporter (1990) Japan
Chris Hadfield – STS-74 (1995) Canada
A British con artist, Peter Rodney Llewellyn, almost visited Mir in 1999 on a private contract after promising US$100 million for the privilege.
Station operations
Expeditions
Mir was visited by a total of 28 long-duration or "principal" crews, each of which was given a sequential expedition number formatted as EO-X. Expeditions varied in length (from the 72-day flight of the crew of EO-28 to the 437-day flight of Valeri Polyakov), but generally lasted around six months. Principal expedition crews consisted of two or three crew members, who often launched as part of one expedition but returned with another (Polyakov launched with EO-14 and landed with EO-17). The principal expeditions were often supplemented with visiting crews who remained on the station during the week-long handover period between one crew and the next before returning with the departing crew, the station's life support system being able to support a crew of up to six for short periods. The station was occupied for a total of four distinct periods; 12 March–16 July 1986 (EO-1), 5 February 1987 – 27 April 1989 (EO-2–EO-4), the record-breaking run from 5 September 1989 – 28 August 1999 (EO-5–EO-27), and 4 April–16 June 2000 (EO-28). By the end, it had been visited by 104 different people from 12 different nations, making it the most visited spacecraft in history (a record later surpassed by the ISS).
Early existence
Due to pressure to launch the station on schedule, mission planners were left without Soyuz spacecraft or modules to launch to the station at first. It was decided to launch Soyuz T-15 on a dual mission to both Mir and Salyut 7.
Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov first docked with Mir on 15 March 1986. During their nearly 51-day stay on Mir, they brought the station online and checked its systems. They unloaded two Progress spacecraft launched after their arrival, Progress 25 and Progress 26.
On 5 May 1986, they undocked from Mir for a day-long journey to Salyut 7. They spent 51 days there and gathered 400 kg of scientific material from Salyut 7 for return to Mir. While Soyuz T-15 was at Salyut 7, the uncrewed Soyuz TM-1 arrived at the unoccupied Mir and remained for 9 days, testing the new Soyuz TM model. Soyuz T-15 redocked with Mir on 26 June and delivered the experiments and 20 instruments, including a multichannel spectrometer. The EO-1 crew spent their last 20 days on Mir conducting Earth observations before returning to Earth on 16 July 1986, leaving the new station unoccupied.
The second expedition to Mir, EO-2, launched on Soyuz TM-2 on 5 February 1987. During their stay, the Kvant-1 module, launched on 30 March 1987, arrived. It was the first experimental version of a planned series of '37K' modules scheduled to be launched to Mir on Buran. Kvant-1 was originally planned to dock with Salyut 7; due to technical problems during its development, it was reassigned to Mir. The module carried the first set of six gyroscopes for attitude control. The module also carried instruments for X-ray and ultraviolet astrophysical observations.
The initial rendezvous of the Kvant-1 module with Mir on 5 April 1987 was troubled by the failure of the onboard control system. After the failure of the second attempt to dock, the resident cosmonauts, Yuri Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveykin, conducted an EVA to fix the problem. They found a trash bag which had been left in orbit after the departure of one of the previous cargo ships and was now located between the module and the station, which prevented the docking. After removing the bag, docking was completed on 12 April.
The Soyuz TM-2 launch was the beginning of a string of 6 Soyuz launches and three long-duration crews between 5 February 1987 and 27 April 1989. This period also saw the first international visitors, Muhammed Faris (Syria), Abdul Ahad Mohmand (Afghanistan) and Jean-Loup Chrétien (France). With the departure of EO-4 on Soyuz TM-7 on 27 April 1989 the station was again left unoccupied.
Third start
The launch of Soyuz TM-8 on 5 September 1989 marked the beginning of the longest human presence in space, until 23 October 2010, when this record was surpassed by the ISS. It also marked the beginning of Mir's second expansion. The Kvant-2 and Kristall modules were now ready for launch. Alexander Viktorenko and Aleksandr Serebrov docked with Mir and brought the station out of its five-month hibernation. On 29 September the cosmonauts installed equipment in the docking system in preparation for the arrival of Kvant-2, the first of the 20 tonne add-on modules based on the TKS spacecraft from the Almaz programme.
After a 40-day delay caused by faulty computer chips, Kvant-2 was launched on 26 November 1989. After problems deploying the craft's solar array and with the automated docking systems on both Kvant-2 and Mir, the new module was docked manually on 6 December. Kvant-2 added a second set of control moment gyroscopes (CMGs, or "gyrodynes") to Mir, and brought the new life support systems for recycling water and generating oxygen, reducing dependence on ground resupply. The module featured a large airlock with a one-metre hatch. A special backpack unit (known as Ikar), an equivalent of the US Manned Maneuvering Unit, was located inside Kvant-2's airlock.
Soyuz TM-9 launched EO-6 crew members Anatoly Solovyev and Aleksandr Balandin on 11 February 1990. While docking, the EO-5 crew noted that three thermal blankets on the ferry were loose, potentially creating problems on reentry, but it was decided that they would be manageable. Their stay on board Mir saw the addition of the Kristall module, launched 31 May 1990. The first docking attempt on 6 June was aborted due to an attitude control thruster failure. Kristall arrived at the front port on 10 June and was relocated to the lateral port opposite Kvant-2 the next day, restoring the equilibrium of the complex. Due to the delay in the docking of Kristall, EO-6 was extended by 10 days to permit the activation of the module's systems and to accommodate an EVA to repair the loose thermal blankets on Soyuz TM-9.
Kristall contained furnaces for use in producing crystals under microgravity conditions (hence the choice of name for the module). The module was also equipped with biotechnology research equipment, including a small greenhouse for plant cultivation experiments which was equipped with a source of light and a feeding system, in addition to equipment for astronomical observations. The most obvious features of the module were the two Androgynous Peripheral Attach System (APAS-89) docking ports designed to be compatible with the Buran spacecraft. Although they were never used in a Buran docking, they were useful later during the Shuttle-Mir programme, providing a berthing location for US Space Shuttles.
The EO-7 relief crew arrived aboard Soyuz TM-10 on 3 August 1990. The new crew arrived at Mir with quail for Kvant-2's cages, one of which laid an egg en route to the station. It was returned to Earth, along with 130 kg of experiment results and industrial products, in Soyuz TM-9. Two more expeditions, EO-8 and EO-9, continued the work of their predecessors whilst tensions grew back on Earth.
Post-Soviet period
The EO-10 crew, launched aboard Soyuz TM-13 on 2 October 1991, was the last crew to launch from the USSR and continued the occupation of Mir during the fall of the Soviet Union. The crew launched as Soviet citizens and returned to Earth on 25 March 1992 as Russians. The newly formed Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) was unable to finance the unlaunched Spektr and Priroda modules, instead putting them into storage and ending Mir's second expansion.
The first human mission flown from an independent Kazakhstan was Soyuz TM-14, launched on 17 March 1992, which carried the EO-11 crew to Mir, docking on 19 March before the departure of Soyuz TM-13. On 17 June, Russian president Boris Yeltsin and US president George H. W. Bush announced what would later become the Shuttle-Mir programme, a cooperative venture which proved useful to the cash-strapped Roskosmos (and led to the eventual completion and launch of Spektr and Priroda). EO-12 followed in July, alongside a brief visit by French astronaut Michel Tognini. The following crew, EO-13, began preparations for the Shuttle-Mir programme by flying to the station in a modified spacecraft, Soyuz TM-16 (launched on 26 January 1993), which was equipped with an APAS-89 docking system rather than the usual probe-and-drogue, enabling it to dock to Kristall and test the port which would later be used by US Space Shuttles. The spacecraft also enabled controllers to obtain data on the dynamics of docking a spacecraft to a space station off the station's longitudinal axis, in addition to data on the structural integrity of this configuration via a test called Rezonans conducted on 28 January. Soyuz TM-15, meanwhile, departed with the EO-12 crew on 1 February.
Throughout the period following the collapse of the USSR, crews on Mir experienced occasional reminders of the economic chaos occurring in Russia. The initial cancellation of Spektr and Priroda was the first such sign, followed by the reduction in communications as a result of the fleet of tracking ships being withdrawn from service by Ukraine. The new Ukrainian government also vastly raised the price of the Kurs docking systems, manufactured in Kyiv – the Russians' attempts to reduce their dependence on Kurs would later lead to accidents during TORU tests in 1997. Various Progress spacecraft had parts of their cargoes missing, either because the consumable in question had been unavailable, or because the ground crews at Baikonur had looted them. The problems became particularly obvious during the launch of the EO-14 crew aboard Soyuz TM-17 in July; shortly before launch there was a black-out at the pad, and the power supply to the nearby city of Leninsk failed an hour after launch. Nevertheless, the spacecraft launched on time and arrived at the station two days later. All of Mir's ports were occupied, and so Soyuz TM-17 had to station-keep 200 metres away from the station for half an hour before docking while Progress M-18 vacated the core module's front port and departed.
The EO-13 crew departed on 22 July, and soon after Mir passed through the annual Perseid meteor shower, during which the station was hit by several particles. A spacewalk was conducted on 28 September to inspect the station's hull, but no serious damage was reported. Soyuz TM-18 arrived on 10 January 1994 carrying the EO-15 crew (including Valeri Polyakov, who was to remain on Mir for 14 months), and Soyuz TM-17 left on 14 January. The undocking was unusual in that the spacecraft was to pass along Kristall to obtain photographs of the APAS to assist in the training of space shuttle pilots. Due to an error in setting up the control system, the spacecraft struck the station a glancing blow during the manoeuvre, scratching the exterior of Kristall.
On 3 February 1994, Mir veteran Sergei Krikalev became the first Russian cosmonaut to launch on a US spacecraft, flying on Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-60.
The launch of Soyuz TM-19, carrying the EO-16 crew, was delayed due to the unavailability of a payload fairing for the booster that was to carry it, but the spacecraft eventually left Earth on 1 July 1994 and docked two days later. They stayed only four months to allow the Soyuz schedule to line up with the planned Space Shuttle manifest, and so Polyakov greeted a second resident crew in October, prior to the undocking of Soyuz TM-19, when the EO-17 crew arrived in Soyuz TM-20.
Shuttle–Mir
On 3 February 1995, the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, flying STS-63, opened operations on Mir. Referred to as the "near-Mir" mission, the mission saw the first rendezvous of a Space Shuttle with Mir as the orbiter approached within 37 feet (11 m) of the station as a dress rehearsal for later docking missions and for equipment testing. Five weeks after Discovery's departure, the EO-18 crew, including the first US cosmonaut Norman Thagard, arrived in Soyuz TM-21. The EO-17 crew left a few days later, with Polyakov completing his record-breaking 437-day spaceflight. During EO-18, the Spektr science module (which served as living and working space for American astronauts) was launched aboard a Proton rocket and docked to the station, carrying research equipment from America and other nations. The expedition's crew returned to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis following the first Shuttle–Mir docking mission, STS-71. Atlantis, launched on 27 June 1995, successfully docked with Mir on 29 June becoming the first US spacecraft to dock with a Russian spacecraft since the ASTP in 1975. The orbiter delivered the EO-19 crew and returned the EO-18 crew to Earth. The EO-20 crew were launched on 3 September, followed in November by the arrival of the docking module during STS-74.
On 21 February 1996, the two-man EO-21 crew was launched aboard Soyuz TM-23, and they were soon joined by US crew member Shannon Lucid, who was brought to the station by Atlantis during STS-76. During this mission, the first joint US spacewalk on Mir took place, deploying the Mir Environmental Effects Payload package for the docking module. Lucid became the first American to carry out a long-duration mission aboard Mir with her 188-day mission, which set the US single spaceflight record. During Lucid's time aboard Mir, Priroda, the station's final module, arrived as did French visitor Claudie Haigneré flying the Cassiopée mission. The flight aboard Soyuz TM-24 also delivered the EO-22 crew of Valery Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri.
On 16 September 1996, with the launch of Atlantis and the STS-79 flight, Lucid's stay aboard Mir ended. During this fourth docking, John Blaha transferred onto Mir to take his place as resident US astronaut. His stay on the station improved operations in a number of areas, including transfer procedures for a docked space shuttle, "hand-over" procedures for long-duration American crew members, and "ham" amateur radio communications, as well as two spacewalks to reconfigure the station's power grid. Blaha spent four months with the EO-22 crew before returning to Earth aboard Atlantis on STS-81 in January 1997, at which point he was replaced by physician Jerry Linenger. During his flight, Linenger became the first American to conduct a spacewalk from a foreign space station and the first to test the Russian-built Orlan-M spacesuit alongside Russian cosmonaut Vasili Tsibliyev, flying EO-23. All three crew members of EO-23 performed a "fly-around" in Soyuz TM-25 spacecraft. Linenger and his Russian crewmates Vasili Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Lazutkin faced several difficulties during the mission, including the most severe fire aboard an orbiting spacecraft (caused by a malfunctioning Vika), failures of various systems, a near collision with Progress M-33 during a long-distance TORU test and a total loss of station electrical power. The power failure also caused a loss of attitude control, which led to an uncontrolled "tumble" through space.
Linenger was succeeded by Anglo-American astronaut Michael Foale, carried up by Atlantis on STS-84, alongside Russian mission specialist Elena Kondakova. Foale's increment proceeded fairly normally until 25 June when during the second test of the Progress manual docking system, TORU, Progress M-34 collided with solar arrays on the Spektr module and crashed into the module's outer shell, puncturing the module and causing depressurisation on the station. Only quick actions on the part of the crew, cutting cables leading to the module and closing Spektr's hatch, prevented the crews having to abandon the station in Soyuz TM-25. Their efforts stabilised the station's air pressure, whilst the pressure in Spektr, containing many of Foale's experiments and personal effects, dropped to a vacuum. In an effort to restore some of the power and systems lost following the isolation of Spektr and to attempt to locate the leak, EO-24 commander Anatoly Solovyev and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov carried out a risky salvage operation later in the flight, entering the empty module during a so-called "intra-vehicular activity" or "IVA" spacewalk and inspecting the condition of hardware and running cables through a special hatch from Spektr's systems to the rest of the station. Following these first investigations, Foale and Solovyev conducted a 6-hour EVA outside Spektr to inspect the damage.
After these incidents, the US Congress and NASA considered whether to abandon the programme out of concern for the astronauts' safety, but NASA administrator Daniel Goldin decided to continue. The next flight to Mir, STS-86, carried David Wolf aboard Atlantis. During the orbiter's stay, Titov and Parazynski conducted a spacewalk to affix a cap to the docking module for a future attempt by crew members to seal the leak in Spektr's hull. Wolf spent 119 days aboard Mir with the EO-24 crew and was replaced during STS-89 with Andy Thomas, who carried out the last US expedition on Mir. The EO-25 crew arrived in Soyuz TM-27 in January 1998 before Thomas returned to Earth on the final Shuttle–Mir mission, STS-91.
Final days and deorbit
Following the 8 June 1998 departure of Discovery, the EO-25 crew of Budarin and Musabayev remained on Mir, completing materials experiments and compiling a station inventory. On 2 July, Roskosmos director Yuri Koptev announced that, due to a lack of funding to keep Mir active, the station would be deorbited in June 1999. The EO-26 crew of Gennady Padalka and Sergei Avdeyev arrived on 15 August in Soyuz TM-28, alongside physicist Yuri Baturin, who departed with the EO-25 crew on 25 August in Soyuz TM-27. The crew carried out two spacewalks, one inside Spektr to reseat some power cables and another outside to set up experiments delivered by Progress M-40, which also carried a large amount of propellant to begin alterations to Mir's orbit in preparation for the station's decommissioning. 20 November 1998 saw the launch of Zarya, the first module of the ISS, but delays to the new station's service module Zvezda had led to calls for Mir to be kept in orbit past 1999. Roscosmos confirmed that it would not fund Mir past the set deorbit date.
The crew of EO-27, Viktor Afanasyev and Jean-Pierre Haigneré, arrived in Soyuz TM-29 on 22 February 1999 alongside Ivan Bella, who returned to Earth with Padalka in Soyuz TM-28. The crew carried out three EVAs to retrieve experiments and deploy a prototype communications antenna on Sofora. On 1 June it was announced that the deorbit of the station would be delayed by six months to allow time to seek alternative funding to keep the station operating. The rest of the expedition was spent preparing the station for its deorbit; a special analog computer was installed and each of the modules, starting with the docking module, was mothballed in turn and sealed off. The crew loaded their results into Soyuz TM-29 and departed Mir on 28 August 1999, ending a run of continuous occupation, which had lasted for eight days short of ten years. The station's control moment gyroscopes (CMGs, or "gyrodynes") and main computer were shut down on 7 September, leaving Progress M-42 to control Mir and refine the station's orbital decay rate.
Near the end of its life, there were plans for private interests to purchase Mir, possibly for use as the first orbital television/movie studio. The privately funded Soyuz TM-30 mission by MirCorp, that was launched on 4 April 2000, carried two crew members, Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri, to the station for two months to do repair work with the hope of proving that the station could be made safe. This was to be the last crewed mission to Mir—while Russia was optimistic about Mir's future, its commitments to the ISS project left no funding to support the aging station.
