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.