Soyuz TM-12

Soyuz TM-12
Mission insignia
Mission statistics
Mission name	Soyuz TM-12
Spacecraft mass	7160 kg
Crew size	3
Call sign	Озо́н (Ozone)
Launch date	May 18, 1991 12:50:28 UTC Gagarin's Start
Landing	October 10, 1991 04:12:18 UTC 61 km SW of Arkalyk
Mission duration	144 days 15 hours 21 minutes 50 seconds
Number of orbits	~2,260
Apogee	397 km
Perigee	389 km
Orbital period	92.4 minutes
Orbital inclination	51.6°
Related missions
Previous mission Subsequent mission Soyuz TM-11 Soyuz TM-13

Crew

Position	Launching Crew	Landing Crew
Commander	Anatoly Artsebarsky Only spaceflight
Flight Engineer	Sergei Krikalyov Second spaceflight	Toktar Aubakirov Only spaceflight
Research Cosmonaut	Helen Sharman Only spaceflight Project Juno	Franz Viehböck Only spaceflight

Mission highlights

12th expedition to Mir. Included first Briton in space.

The Derbents welcomed aboard Mir 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, 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 seeds was placed in the Kvant-2 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. 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.

Spent 144 days docked to Mir. While it was in orbit, the failed coup d’etat against Mikhail Gorbachev rocked the Soviet Union, setting in motion events which led to the end of the Soviet Union on January 1, 1992.