[3] It had been visited twice by the crew of Soyuz T-15, between March and July 1986, who transferred equipment from the previous Soviet space station Salyut 7.

[3] The crew from February to July 1987, consisted of Commander Yuri Romanenko, and Flight Engineer Aleksandr Laveykin.

EO-2 was originally planned to consist of Aleksandr Serebrov and Vladimir Titov, but shortly before the launch of Soyuz TM-2 to start the expedition, the crew was changed to Romanenko and Laveykin, possibly due to illness.

[3] To determine the problem with the Kvant docking, both Romanenko and Laveykin took part in an emergency spacewalk on April 11.

On the spacewalk they discovered some debris, probably a trash bag, was preventing the spacecraft from fully docking.

The next day the FSM was undocked from Kvant, as it was no longer needed, and it was placed in a parking orbit 41 km above Mir; over a year later it underwent uncontrolled reentry.

During June the EO-2 crew performed two spacewalks (EVAs) to install a new set of solar arrays, which would boost the electrical capacity of the station to 11.4 kW.

[6] The desire to have favourable daylight conditions during passes over Syria was the primary motivation for the timing of the mission.

Also brought to the station was potential Buran space shuttle pilot, Anatoli Levchenko, who returned to Earth with the EO-2 crew.