WORLD : Cosmonauts Join Orbiting Crew
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MOSCOW — A Soviet spaceship with two cosmonauts aboard docked with the Mir space station today, two days after blastoff, the official Tass news agency reported.
It was the latest step in a mission designed to turn a profit of more than $40 million, a first in the 32-year history of the Soviet space program.
Tass reported no problems as flight commander Anatoly Solovyov and engineer Alexander Balandin docked their Soyuz TM-9 capsule with the space station. The two are to take over from Alexander Viktorenko and Alexander Serebrov, who have been aboard the orbiter for two months. Viktorenko and Serebrov are scheduled to return to Earth on Monday, Tass said.
The Soyuz TM-9 mission is designed to put to use the Kristall module, described by the government newspaper Izvestia as the first orbital factory for the full-scale manufacture of technological and biotechnological materials in the near-weightless conditions on Mir.
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