Space Missions
His first flight was on December 10, 1977 on Soyuz 26 to the space station Salyut 6. A two-men crew consisted of Romanenko as the flight commander and Georgi Grechko as engineer. They spent 96 days and 10 hours on the orbit, meeting Soyuz 27, Soyuz 28 and Progress 1. During the mission, Romanenko performed a one and a half hour long space walk.
In his second mission on September 18, 1980, together with the first Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, Romanenko flew Soyuz 38 to Salyut 6 and returned 7 days later. With this flight, Méndez was the first hispanophone and first person of African descent in space.
The third and last flight of Romanenko was on Soyuz TM-2 with Aleksandr Laveykin on February 6, 1987 to the Mir station. During that mission, Romanenko spent 326 days aboard Mir, which was the longest stay in space then. He conducted three space walks, on April 11, June 11 and June 16, 1987 with a total duration 8 hr 48 min. He returned to Earth on December 29, 1987 in Soyuz TM-3.
Romanenko retired from flights in 1988 and became the director of Buran program, which was a Soviet alternative to the Space Shuttle. The program completed one flight in 1988 and was cancelled in 1993.
Read more about this topic: Yury Romanenko
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