[4] It remained there until December, when it brought Titov and Manarov of the EO-3 crew back to Earth.

It also landed French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, ending his 25-day-long spaceflight which started with Soyuz TM-7.

Valeri Polyakov remained behind on Mir with cosmonauts Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov when Mohmand and Lyakhov returned to Earth in Soyuz TM-5.

The crew of Soyuz TM-6 had a unique makeup, with a commander (Vladimir Lyakhov) who had been trained to fly a Soyuz-TM solo in the event a rescue ship needed to be sent to recover two cosmonauts from Mir, no flight engineer, and two inexperienced cosmonaut-researchers.

One was Valeri Polyakov, who would remain aboard Mir with Titov and Manarov to monitor their health during the final months of their planned year-long stay.