This spacecraft also carried Valeri Polyakov, who would stay aboard Mir after the crew of EP-3 returned to Earth in Soyuz TM-5.
It was decided by the Glavcosmos chairman that the Afghan's spaceflight would be moved earlier than originally planned, so that it would occur before the Soviet military completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
During an attempted burn, the computer shut off the engines prematurely, believing the spacecraft was out of alignment.
The flight director decided that they would have to remain in orbit an extra day (a full revolution of the Earth), so they could determine what the problem was.
During this time it was realised that during the second attempted engine burn, the computer had tried to execute the program which was used to dock with Mir several months earlier during EP-2.