The Buran programme, also known as the "VKK Space Orbiter programme", was a Soviet and later Russian reusable spacecraft project that began in 1974 at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute in Moscow and was formally suspended in 1993. In addition to being the designation for the whole Soviet/Russian reusable spacecraft project, Buran was also the name given to orbiter 1K, which completed one uncrewed spaceflight in 1988 and was the only Soviet reusable spacecraft to be launched into space. The Buran-class orbiters used the expendable Energia rocket as a launch vehicle.
Pavel Romanovich Popovich was a Soviet cosmonaut.
Yuri Petrovich Artyukhin was a Soviet Russian cosmonaut and engineer who made a single flight into space.
Minsk is an aircraft carrier that served the Soviet Navy and the Russian Navy from 1978 to 1994. She was the second Kiev-class vessel to be built.
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev is a Russian mechanical engineer, former cosmonaut and former head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev is a retired Russian and Soviet cosmonaut and pilot. Solovyev was born on January 16, 1948, in Riga, Latvia. Solovyev holds the world record on the number of spacewalks performed (16), and accumulated time spent spacewalking.
Michel Ange-Charles Tognini is a French test pilot, engineer, brigadier general in the French Air Force, and a former CNES and ESA astronaut who served from 1 January 2005 to 1 November 2011 as head of the European Astronaut Centre of the European Space Agency. A veteran of two space flights, Tognini has logged a total of 19 days in space. Tognini has 4000 flight hours on 80 types of aircraft. He is fluent in English and Russian.
Soyuz TM-3 was the third crewed spaceflight to visit the Soviet space station Mir, following Soyuz T-15 and Soyuz TM-2. It was launched in July 1987, during the long duration expedition Mir EO-2, and acted as a lifeboat for the second segment of that expedition. There were three people aboard the spacecraft at launch, including the two man crew of the week-long mission Mir EP-1, consisting of Soviet cosmonaut Aleksandr Viktorenko and Syrian Muhammed Faris. Faris was the first Syrian to travel to space, and as of June 2021, the only one. The third cosmonaut launched was Aleksandr Aleksandrov, who would replace one of the long duration crew members Aleksandr Laveykin of Mir EO-2. Laveykin had been diagnosed by ground-based doctors to have minor heart problems, so he returned to Earth with the EP-1 crew in Soyuz TM-2.
Soyuz TM-4 was a crewed Soyuz spaceflight to Mir. It was launched on 21 December 1987, and carried the first two crew members of the third long duration expedition, Mir EO-3. These crew members, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov, would stay in space for just under 366 days, setting a new spaceflight record. The third astronaut launched by Soyuz TM-4 was Anatoli Levchenko, who returned to Earth about a week later with the remaining crew of Mir EO-2. Levchenko was a prospective pilot for the Soviet Space shuttle Buran. The purpose of his mission, named Mir LII-1, was to familiarize him with spaceflight.
Aleksandr Panayotov Aleksandrov is a retired Bulgarian cosmonaut. He is the second Bulgarian to have flown to space, behind Georgi Ivanov.
Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov is a former Soviet cosmonaut and twice Hero of the Soviet Union.
Anatoly Semyonovich Levchenko was a Soviet cosmonaut in the Buran programme.
Igor Petrovich Volk was a Russian test pilot and former Soviet cosmonaut in the Buran programme.
Aleksey Nikolayevich Ovchinin is a Russian Air Force Major and cosmonaut, who was selected in 2006. Ovchinin made his first spaceflight in 2016, and was assigned as commander of Soyuz MS-10 in 2018.
Rimantas Antanas Stankevičius was a Lithuanian test pilot and cosmonaut in the Soviet space shuttle Buran programme. He was killed in a crash of his Su-27 fighter plane during an airshow in Salgareda.
Sergey Aleksandrovich Volkov is a retired Russian cosmonaut and engineer. He was a member of three missions to the International Space Station, spending more than a year in total in space. During his missions he did four spacewalks lasting more than 23 hours in total. Volkov retired from the Cosmonaut group in February 2017.
Anton Nikolaevich Shkaplerov is a former Russian cosmonaut. He is a veteran of four spaceflights.
Jean-Loup Jacques Marie Chrétien is a French retired Général de Brigade in the Armée de l'Air, and a former CNES spationaut. He flew on two Franco-Soviet space missions and a NASA Space Shuttle mission. Chrétien was the first Frenchman and the first western European in space.
Sergey Nikolaevich Anokhin was a Soviet Air Forces officer and a test pilot serving in the Soviet space program.
