Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing
215 km west of Karaganda / 180 km southwest of Tselinograd.
It was the
French Mission ALTAIR. Following a two day solo flight the Soyuz docked with
the MIR space station on 03.07.1993. It followed a common scientific work with
the
13th resident
crew. After returning to Earth of the
13th crew (together
with
Haigneré),
Tsibilyev and
Serebrov became the
14th MIR resident
crew. They performed experiments in materials science.
Tsibilyev and
Serebrov performed five
EVAs on
16.09.1993 (4h 18m), 20.09.1993 (3h 14m), 28.09.1993 (1h 52m), 22.10.1993 (0h
38m) and 29.10.1993 (4h 12m), in which the Rapana truss was installed and
several experiment packages were retrieved.
During the separation of
the Soyuz the spacecraft the
TsUP
then lost communications with MIR and Soyuz TM-17. The steering had to be made
manually. During that the Soyuz hit the MIR. The MIR cosmonauts did not feel
the impact, though the station's guidance system registered angular velocity
and switched to free flying mode. But all in all there were no serious
damages.
