Soyuz TM-19 was a crewed

Soyuz Soyuz is a transliteration of the Cyrillic text Союз (Russian language, Russian and Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Soviet Union, Union of Soviet Socialist Republi ...

spaceflight to space station

Mir ''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...

that carried Russian cosmonaut

Yuri Malenchenko Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko (; born December 22, 1961) is a retired Russian cosmonaut. Malenchenko became the first person to marry in space, on 10 August 2003, when he married Ekaterina Dmitrieva, who was in Texas, while he was over New Zealan ...

and Kazakh cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev, while also landing German astronaut

Ulf Merbold Ulf Dietrich Merbold (; born 20 June 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shu ...

. It launched on 1 July 1994, at 12:24:50

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

Crew

Mission highlights

Commander Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Musabayev, both spaceflight rookies, were to have been launched with veteran

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

Gennadi Strekalov, who would have returned to Earth with Viktor Afanasyev and Yuri Usachov in

Soyuz TM-18 Soyuz TM-18 was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome and landed 112 km north of Arkalyk. TM-18 was a two-day solo flight that docked with the ''Mir'' space station on January 10, 1994. The three cosmonauts became the 15th resident crew on board ...

after a few days on Mir. However, the cancellation of one of two

Progress-M Progress-M (, GRAU indices 11F615A55 and 11F615A60), also known as Progress 7K-TGM, is a Russian, previously Soviet spacecraft which is used to resupply space stations. It is a variant of the Progress spacecraft, originally built in the late 1 ...

cargo ships scheduled to resupply

during the Agat crew's stay meant that Strekalov's couch had to carry supplies. The result was the first all-rookie Soyuz flight since

Soyuz 25 Soyuz 25 (, ''Union 25'') was an October 1977 Soviet crewed space flight, the first to the new Salyut 6 space station, which had been launched 10 days earlier. However, the mission was aborted when cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalyonok and Valery Ryumi ...

in October 1977. Docking occurred without incident on July 3. Both cosmonauts and Doctor Valeri Polyakov (who had arrived on Soyuz TM-18) became the 16th resident crew; many technical problems with the station arose during this expedition, necessitating a previously untried manual supply docking by Malenchenko. On November 3, Malenchenko, Musabayev and Merbold undocked in Soyuz TM-19 and backed 190m from Mir. They then activated the Kurs automatic approach system, which successfully redocked the spacecraft. The cosmonauts then transferred back to Mir. The test was related to the difficulties Soyuz TM-20 and Progress M-24 experienced during their automatic approaches. Final undocking and reentry occurred the following day without incident.

Mission accomplishments

*Docked with

*Partial crew exchange *Conducted medical experiments *Conducted materials experiments *Malenchenko and Musabayev perform EVA on 09.09.1994 (5h 6m) to repair station's external insulation *Both cosmonauts repeat EVA on 14.09.1994 (6h 1m) for same purpose *First successful manual docking of a

Progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...

supply ship

Spacecraft location

In 2010, the Energia corporation gave the Soyuz TM-19 landing capsule to the Techink Museum Speyer in

Speyer Speyer (, older spelling ; ; ), historically known in English as Spires, is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in the western part of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the r ...

, Germany, where it is exhibited as a permanent public display ever since.

References

{{Orbital launches in 1994 Crewed Soyuz missions Spacecraft launched in 1994