The expedition began in November 1988, when crew members Commander Aleksandr Volkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev arrived at the station via the spacecraft Soyuz TM-7.

This expedition, Salyut 7 EO-4, was intended to be 6 months long, but the Commander Vladimir Vasyutin became ill, and the mission was shortened, forcing the cosmonauts to leave the station unmanned.

[3] The French president at the time, François Mitterrand, insisted on attending the launch of the Soyuz TM-7, of which Frenchman Chrétien was a crew member.

[4] On November 28, two days after launch, the Soyuz TM-7 spacecraft docked to Mir, and for the first time six cosmonauts were simultaneously aboard the complex.

[5] A highlight of the Aragatz mission was the spacewalk which was performed by Volkov and Chrétien on 9 December 1988, and lasted for 5 hours and 57 minutes.

[1] Its purpose was to install the 240 kg French experimental deployable structure, known as ERA, and a panel of material samples.

Both the French mission and EO-3 ended when Chrétien, Titov, and Manarov landed in the spacecraft Soyuz TM-6 on December 21, which occurred six hours after undocking from Mir.

On December 27, shortly after Soyuz TM-6 departed, the expedition's first Progress resupply spacecraft docked with the station, two days after its launch.

[1] The EO-4 crew filled Progress 39 with waste and excess equipment used during the Aragatz mission, and then the spacecraft undocked on February 7, and was intentionally destroyed during atmospheric reentry later that day.

The updated design would be called Progress-M, and its first flight would be Progress M-1 in August 1989, just prior to the arrival of the Mir EO-5 crew in September.