Soyuz TM-11 was the 11th mission and the eighth long-duration expedition to Mir space station. The mission began on December 2, 1990, 08:13:32 UTC, launching Commander Viktor Afanasyev, Flight Engineer Musa Manarov and Research Cosmonaut Toyohiro Akiyama, the first space tourist, into orbit. They docked with Mir two days later. During their stay there, cosmonauts performed EVAs, various station repair and maintenance tasks, and carried out scientific experiments in biology, geophysics, space technology, astronomy etc. They were visited by several Progress resupply spacecrafts, and welcomed aboard the ninth long-duration expedition crew, which arrived in Soyuz TM-12 vehicle. Toyohiro Akiyama returned on December 10, 1990, in Soyuz TM-10 spacecraft, while the mission itself concluded with a safe landing back on Earth on May 26, 1991, 10:04:13 UTC.
The Soyuz-U2 was a Soviet, later Russian, carrier rocket. It was derived from the Soyuz-U, and a member of the R-7 family of rockets. It featured increased performance compared with the baseline Soyuz-U, due to the use of syntin propellant, as opposed to RP-1 paraffin, used on the Soyuz-U.
Soyuz TM-11 was a Soyuz spacecraft which launched on 2 December 1990 08:13 UTC. It transported two members of the Expedition 8 crew and one Japanese journalist to Mir. The Expedition 8 crew consisted of Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov. The Japanese reporter was Toyohiro Akiyama.
Soyuz TM Details
Date of
Birth: Dec. 31, 1948
Age: 75
Date of
Birth: June 22, 1942
Age: 82
Date of
Birth: March 22, 1951
Age: 73
The Soviet space program, was the national space program of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) actived from 1930s until disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union's space program was mainly based on the cosmonautic exploration of space and the development of the expandable launch vehicles, which had been split between many design bureaus competing against each other. Over its 60-years of history, the Russian program was responsible for a number of pioneering feats and accomplishments in the human space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes: Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars, respectively, Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.
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