Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing
107 km southwest of Akmola.
Following a two day solo flight Soyuz TM-23
docked with the MIR space station on February 23, 1996. Both cosmonauts became
the
21st resident crew
after the crew exchanging.
Yuri
Onufriyenko and Yuri
Usachyov performed six
EVAs
on March 15, 1996 (5h 51m), May 20, 1996 (5h 20m), May 24, 1996 (5h 43m), May
30, 1996 (4h 20m), June 06, 1996 (3h 34m) and June 13, 1996 (5h 42m) carrying
out following work: installation of the STRELA telescopic boom, the
MSCA solar array, the multispectral scanner,
exchanging materials samples and deploying of the Ferma 3-truss (an automatic
deploying failed before, so had to do it manual).
Protein crystal
growth experiments were done. More experiments in materials science using high
temperture melting oven "Optizon". Other experiments were Visual Earth
Observation and medical research. The new module "Priroda" arrived on April 26,
1996. Supplies arrived with cargo spacecraft Progress M-31.
The MIR
resident crew was visited by the crew of
STS-76. Since that time (March 24, 1996) U.S. astronaut
Shannon
Lucid completed the
21st resident
crew.
