Soyuz TM-6 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 ''
Mir''. It was launched on 29 August 1988, at 04:23:11
UTC, for the station's third long-duration expedition,
Mir EO-3. The three-person crew that was launched consisted of Research Doctor
Valeri Polyakov, who became part of the EO-3 crew, as well as the two crew members of the week-long mission
Mir EP-3, which included the first ever
Afghan cosmonaut,
Abdul Ahad Mohmand.
On September 8, Soyuz TM-6 was undocked from ''Mirs Kvant port and redocked onto the ''Mir'' Base Block's port.
It remained there until December, when it brought Titov and Manarov of the EO-3 crew back to Earth. It also landed
French astronaut
Jean-Loup Chrétien, ending his 25-day-long spaceflight which started with
Soyuz TM-7.
Crew
Valeri Polyakov remained behind on ''Mir'' with cosmonauts Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov when Mohmand and Lyakhov returned to Earth in
Soyuz TM-5.
The crew of Soyuz TM-6 had a unique makeup, with a commander (Vladimir Lyakhov) who had been trained to fly a Soyuz-TM solo in the event a rescue ship needed to be sent to recover two cosmonauts from ''Mir'', no flight engineer, and two inexperienced cosmonaut-researchers. One was Valeri Polyakov, who would remain aboard ''Mir'' with Titov and Manarov to monitor their health during the final months of their planned year-long stay. The other was
Intercosmos cosmonaut Abdul Ahad Mohmand, from Afghanistan.
Mission parameters
*
Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
: 7070
kg
*
Perigee: 195 km
*
Apogee: 228 km
*
Inclination: 51.6
°
*
Period: 88.7
minute
A minute is a unit of time defined as equal to 60 seconds.
It is not a unit in the International System of Units (SI), but is accepted for use with SI. The SI symbol for minutes is min (without a dot). The prime symbol is also sometimes used i ...
s
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soyuz TM-06
Afghanistan–Soviet Union relations
Crewed Soyuz missions
1988 in Afghanistan
1988 in the Soviet Union
Spacecraft launched in 1988