Mir Space-Station MissionsThe first manned mission to the latest Soviet space station was made by Soyuz T15. It was launched
on Mar. 13, 1986, with two cosmonauts
aboard, and soon docked with Mir. The crewÑLeonid Kizim and Vladimir SolovyovÑspent 52 days aboard Mir before reentering their Soyuz craft for a dramatic shuttle run to the still-orbiting Salyut 7 space station. The Soviets had earlier sent two Progress supply ships to Mir. When Soyuz T15 docked with Salyut 7, the crew spent nearly two months there. On June 26 they
returned to Mir, and on July 16 they returned to Earth in Soyuz T15.On Feb. 6, 1987, cosmonauts Yury Romanenko and Aleksandr Laveikin were launched toward Mir in Soyuz TM-2, a modified, lighter Soyuz that could carry more cargo and did not require reorienting of Mir for docking. On April 9 they succeeded in joining an unmanned astrophysics module called Kvant with Mir. Laveikin later showed signs of an incipient heart problem, so when Soyuz TM-3 docked on July 24, he returned to Earth with cosmonauts Aleksandr Viktorenko and Muhammad Faris, a Syrian crew member, in the TM-2. Aleksandr Aleksandrov replaced Laveikin. Romanenko and Aleksandrov returned to Earth on Dec. 29, 1987, on the Soyuz TM-3. Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov took their places aboard Mir, remaining a full year. Mir was visited briefly in 1988 by a crew including a Bulgarian cosmonaut, and a later mission marked the first spaceflight for an Afghan.The flight of Soyuz TM-7, launched in November 1988, returned French cosmonaut Jean Loup ChrŽtien to space after his flight in 1982 aboard Soyuz T6. The exchange crew of Soyuz TM-7 returned their craft to Earth in April 1989, and Mir remained empty until September and the docking of Soyuz TM-8 with Aleksandr Viktorenko and Aleksandr Serebrov aboard. This hiatus was a sign of increasing difficulties the Soviet Union was experiencing in funding space efforts. The crew remained in Mir until being replaced in February 1990 and returning to Earth. They conducted many experiments, including one for an American commercial firmÑanother sign of Soviet financial woes, as they began increasingly to turn toward commercial exploitation of their space program.This flight was followed in 1991 by a momentous event on Earth: the breakup of the Soviet Union. The change was particularly striking for Sergei Krikalev, a Leningrad native. Launched into space from the Soviet Union in May 1991, he returned in March 1992 to the land of Russia and to a city whose name had reverted to Saint Petersburg.Later missions to Mir in the 1990s included visits by American astronauts and Space Shuttles and expansion of the station by adding more Kvant modules. Because of the growing problems of the aging Mir, Russia's current plan is to abandon the space station and then let it disintegrate in the course of 1999.