Soyuz TM-12 was the 12th expedition to

Mir ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...

, and included the first

Briton British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mo ...

in space,The mission report is available here: http://www.spacefacts.de/mission/english/soyuz-tm12.htm

Helen Sharman Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC (born 30 May 1963) is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit ...

Crew

Mission highlights

The Mir crew welcomed aboard Anatoli Artsebarski, Sergei Krikalev (on his second visit to the station), and British cosmonaut-researcher Helen Sharman, who was aboard as part of

Project Juno Project Juno was a privately funded campaign which selected Helen Sharman to be the first Briton in space. As the United Kingdom did not, at that time, have a human spaceflight programme (until the UK joined the human spaceflight elements of E ...

, a cooperative venture partly sponsored by British private enterprise. Sharman's experimental program, which was designed by the Soviets, leaned heavily toward life sciences, her speciality being chemistry. A bag of 250,000

pansy The garden pansy (''Viola'' × ''wittrockiana'') is a type of large-flowered hybrid plant cultivated as a garden flower. It is derived by hybridization from several species in the section ''Melanium'' ("the pansies") of the genus ''Viola'', p ...

seeds was placed in the

Kvant-2 Kvant-2 (russian: Квант-2; English: Quantum-II/2) (77KSD, TsM-D, 11F77D) was the third module and second major addition to the Mir space station. Its primary purpose was to deliver new science experiments, better life support systems, and an ...

EVA airlock, a compartment not as protected from cosmic radiation as other Mir compartments. Sharman also contacted nine British schools by radio and conducted high-temperature superconductor experiments with the Elektropograph-7K device. Sharman commented that she had difficulty finding equipment on Mir as there was a great deal more equipment than in the trainer in the cosmonaut city of

Zvezdny Gorodok Star City (russian: Звёздный городо́к, ''Zvyozdny gorodok''The name "Zvyozdny gorodok" literally means "starry townlet".) is a common name of an area in Zvyozdny gorodok, Moscow Oblast, Russia, which has since the 1960s been ...

. Krikalev commented that, while Mir had more modules than it had had the first time he lived on board, it did not seem less crowded, as it contained more equipment. Krikalev also noted that some of the materials making up the station's exterior had faded and lost color, but that this had had no impact on the station's operation. The spacecraft spent 144 days docked to Mir. While it was in orbit, the failed coup d'état against

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

in August 1991 rocked the Soviet Union, setting in motion events which led to the end of the Soviet Union on 26 December.

In popular culture

Out of the Present ''Out of the Present'' is a 1995 documentary film by Andrei Ujică that deals with the prolonged stay of the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev at space station Mir. This was the first time a 35 mm film camera was used in space. Synopsis The fi ...

'', a 1995 film documentary focused on cosmonaut

Sergei Krikalev Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev (russian: Сергей Константинович Крикалёв, also transliterated as Sergei Krikalyov; born 27 August 1958) is a Russian mechanical engineer, former cosmonaut and former head of the Yuri Ga ...

's stay on Mir, features the arrival of Soyuz TM-12.

References

{{Orbital launches in 1991 Crewed Soyuz missions 1991 in the Soviet Union Soviet Union–United Kingdom relations Space programme of the United Kingdom Spacecraft launched in 1991