Soyuz 29

Soyuz 29 launched from Baikonur on June 15, 1978 with Vladimir Kovalyonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov for the second long-duration expedition to Salyut 6. The crew docked with the station the next day and reactivated the orbital complex for a long stay. The mission became part of a Salyut 6 spacecraft exchange. Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov remained aboard the station after the Soviet-East German visiting crew arrived on Soyuz 31, while Valery Bykovsky and Sigmund Jähn returned to Earth in Soyuz 29 on September 3, 1978. Soyuz 29 therefore records both its original launch crew and its later return crew. During the resident expedition, Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov conducted station maintenance, research, and an EVA to retrieve external experiments. Those EVA details are described here but not modeled as mission activities in this batch, to avoid partial activity-sync changes outside the current mission-link repair.