MIR: Expedition 16
(EO-16)

Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing 88 km northeast of Arkalyk.

First time since 17 years (mission Soyuz 25), the crew was a rookie crew without any spaceflight experience.

Following a two day solo flight the Soyuz docked with the MIR space station on 03.07.1994. Main goal of the mission was the partly exchange of the resident crew. Both cosmonauts and doctor cosmonaut Polyakov became the 16th resident crew.

The crew conducted medical experiments (research of problems of weightlessness in long-term mission) and experiments in materials science, Earth observation, astrophysics an biotechnology.

Malenchenko and Musabayev performed two EVAs on 09.09.1994 (5h 06m) and 14.09.1994 (6h 01m), in which the stations external insulation was repaired. There have been many problems during this mission, which finally ended with the first successful manual docking of a Progress supply ship at the station by Malenchenko.