Soyuz TM-16 was the 16th mission and the 13th long-duration expedition to Mir space station. The mission began on January 24, 1993, 05:58:05 UTC, launching Commander Gennadi Manakov and Flight Engineer Alexander Poleshchuk 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 materials research, space technology, astrophysics and earth observation. One of the experiments was the deployment of a 20-m foil reflector, which was a test of a future solar reflector designed to illuminate regions on the Earth's surface. Station crew was visited by several Progress resupply spacecrafts, and welcomed aboard the Soyuz TM-17 crew. The mission concluded with a safe landing back on Earth on July 22, 1993, 06:41:50 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-16 was a Soyuz spacecraft which launched on 24 January 1993 05:58 UTC. It transported two members of the Expedition 13 crew to Mir. The crew consisted of Gennadi Manakov and Alexander Poleshchuk.
Soyuz TM Details
Date of
Birth: June 1, 1950
Date of Death:
Sept. 26, 2019
Date of
Birth: Oct. 30, 1953
Age: 71
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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