The Austrians paid $7 million to fly Viehböck to Mir, and the Kazakh cosmonaut flew partly in an effort to encourage the then-Kazakh SSR to continue to permit launchings from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The cosmonaut-researchers photographed their respective countries from orbit and conducted the usual range of materials processing and medical experiments.

Artsebarsky and Viehböck returned to Earth in Soyuz TM-12, with Volkov remaining on board Mir for an extended mission.

The Soyuz returned from Mir with German Klaus-Dietrich Flade and Krikalev and Volkov, dubbed by some as "the last citizens of the USSR" because they had launched from the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR, and landed in what had since become the independent Republic of Kazakhstan.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.