Crew

• Vladimir Dzhanibekov (2)
• Jugderdemidiyn Gurragcha - Mongolia (1)

Mission Parameters

• Mass: 6800 kg
• Perigee: 197.5 km
• Apogee: 282.8 km
• Inclination: 51.6°
• Period: 89.01 minutes

Mission Highlights

15th expedition to Salyut 6. 8th international crew. Carried intercosmos cosmonaut from Mongolia. Intercosmos mission to Salyut 6. The Soyuz 39 crew visited Vladimir Kovalyonok and Viktor Savinykh, who were delivered by the Soyuz-T4 spacecraft.

Soyuz 39 docked with the first Mongolian cosmonaut aboard. The Fotons assisted the Intercosmos crew with station equipment and oriented the station according to the needs of the Visiting Expedition’s experiments. On March 24 the cosmonauts installed cosmic ray detectors in the work and transfer compartments. On March 26 the cosmonauts performed the Illyuminator (“viewing port”) experiment, which studied the degradation of the station’s viewports. On March 27 Kovalyonok and Savinykh used the Gologramma (“hologram”) apparatus to image a viewing port damaged by micrometeoroids. They repeated this March 28, when they also collected samples of the station’s air and microflora and removed the cosmic ray detectors for return to Earth. March 28-29 were largely devoted to studies of Mongolia from space. The Visiting Expedition crew checked out their spacecraft on March 29. The Soviet news service Tass noted that by March 29 Salyut 6 had conducted 20,140 revolutions of Earth