Mir EO-4
| Mission type | Mir expedition |
|---|---|
| Mission duration | 151 days, 11 hours, 8 minutes (launch to landing) |
| Expedition | |
| Space Station | Mir |
| Began | 26 November 1988 |
| Ended | 26 April 1989, 23:28:01 UTC |
| Arrived aboard |
Soyuz TM-7 Polyakov: Soyuz TM-6 |
| Departed aboard | Soyuz TM-7 |
| Crew | |
| Crew size | Three |
| Members |
Alexander Volkov Sergei Krikalev Valeri Polyakov* * - Transferred from EO-3 |
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Long-term Mir expeditions
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Mir EO-4 (also called Principal Expedition 4) was the fourth long-duration expedition to the Soviet space station Mir. The expedition began in November 1988, when crew members Commander Aleksandr Volkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev arrived at the station via the spacecraft Soyuz TM-7. The third crew member of EO-4, Valeri Polyakov, was already aboard Mir, having arrived in August 1988 part way through the previous expedition, Mir EO-3.
The expedition lasted for five months, and at its conclusion Mir was left unmanned until the launch of Mir EO-5 in September 1989. This ended a continuous habitation of the space station which began in February 1987, with the arrival of the crew of Mir EO-2.
The previous long-duration expedition to Mir, EO-3, was intended to break the record for spaceflight duration of 326 days set by Yuri Romanenko during Mir EO-2. The physician Valeri Polyakov was sent to the station part way through EO-3 so that he could observe the cosmonauts at the end of their record duration flight. Polyakov then stayed aboard Mir to observe the EO-4 crew.
Volkov, the only crew member who had been to space before, had one previous spaceflight. It was a two-month mission in 1985 to the space station Salyut 7, launched by the spacecraft Soyuz T-14. This expedition, Salyut 7 EO-4, was intended to be 6 months long, but the Commander Vladimir Vasyutin became ill, and the mission was shortened, forcing the cosmonauts to leave the station unmanned. Volkov became father of the first ever second-generation cosmonaut, when his son Sergey Volkov became Commander of the International Space Station's Expedition 17 in 2008.
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