Mir EO-17

Mir EO-17 was the seventeenth resident expedition to Mir. Aleksandr Viktorenko and Yelena Kondakova launched on Soyuz TM-20 with ESA astronaut Ulf Merbold on October 3, 1994, docked with Mir on October 6, and joined Valeri Polyakov, who was continuing his record-duration medical research flight. The expedition supported EuroMir 94, station maintenance, Progress cargo operations, and Kurs approach-and-docking tests after earlier Mir traffic problems. Kondakova became the first woman to take part in a long-duration Russian station expedition, and Polyakov returned with Viktorenko and Kondakova in March 1995 after the longest single human spaceflight.