Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing
68 km southeast of Dzheskasgan.
It was the first commercial flight in
Soviet space flight history.
Akiyama's network, the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), paid
for the flight. The Soviets called this their first commercial spaceflight and
claimed to have earned $14 million.
Following a two day solo flight the
Soyuz docked with the
Soyuz
TM-10-Kvant1-MIR-Kristall-Kvant2 complex on 04.12.1990. Japanese television
journalist
Akiyama made daily TV broadcast. Scientific work in Earth
observation, biology, medicine and materials sciences with
seventh resident crew
of the station was done. Then
Afanasiyev and
Manarov became the
eighth resident
crewBoth cosmonauts performed four
EVAs on
07.01.1991 (5h 18m), 23.01.1991 (5h 33m), 26.01.1991 (6h 20m) and 25.04.1991
(3h 34m). During the
EVA's they
completed the repair of the Kvant hatch, installed the Strela boom and solar
array supports on MIR, and finally inspected the Kurs docking system
antenna.
Unmanned cargo spaceships Progress M-6 and M-7 delivered fuel
and other supplies to the space station.
