The crew, consisting of Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin, launched on June 27, 1995, aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-71 mission.

Before the mission, the crew had trained to use special tools in order to release a stuck solar array on the exterior of the Spektr module.

Following a malfunction in Anatoly Solovyev's Orlan space suit minutes into the excursion, mission control directed him to remain attached to the Kvant-2 module via umbilical cable.

[3] Despite this setback, Nikolai Budarin was able to perform several tasks alone, including preparatory work for the installment of MIRAS and retrieval of an American cosmic ray detector, TREK.

The Progress-M spacecraft remained docked to the station until September 4, when it undocked from Mir filled with waste and excess equipment and intentionally burned up on reentry.

[1] During the mission's third and final spacewalk on July 21, the two cosmonauts made a second attempt at installing the MIRAS spectrometer, which they completed without any major problems.

The remainder of the crew's activities during this time consisted of unloading the newly arrived Progress cargo ship and monitoring its automated refueling of the station's core module.

[3] The Mir EO-20 crew consisting of cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Avdeyev, as well as ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter conducting Euromir '95, launched on September 3 at 9:00 GMT aboard Soyuz TM-22.