Interkosmos


Interkosmos was a Soviet space program, designed to help the Soviet Union's allies with manned and unmanned space missions.
The program included the allied east-European states of the Warsaw Pact, CoMEcon, and other socialist states like Afghanistan, Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam. In addition, pro-Soviet non-aligned states such as India and Syria participated, and even states such as the United Kingdom, France and Austria, despite them being capitalist states.
Following the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, there were talks between NASA and Interkosmos in the 1970s about a "Shuttle-Salyut" program to fly Space Shuttle missions to a Salyut space station, with later talks in the 1980s even considering flights of the future Soviet shuttles from the Buran programme to a future US space station.
Whilst the Shuttle-Salyut program never materialized during the existence of the Soviet Interkosmos program, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Shuttle–Mir Program would follow in these footsteps in the mid-1990s and eventually pave the way to the International Space Station.
Beginning in April 1967 with unmanned research satellite missions, the first manned Interkosmos mission occurred in February 1978. So called joint manned spaceflights enabled 14 non-Soviet cosmonauts to participate in Soyuz space flights between 1978 and 1988. The program was responsible for sending into space the first citizen of a country other than the USA or USSR: Vladimír Remek of Czechoslovakia. Interkosmos also resulted in the first black and Hispanic person in space, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez of Cuba, and the first Southeast Asian person in space, Phạm Tuân of Vietnam. Of the countries involved, only Bulgaria sent two cosmonauts in space, although the second one did not fly under the Interkosmos program, and the French spationaut, Jean-Loup Chrétien, flew on two separate flights.
The Soviet Union also made offers of joint manned spaceflight on a commercial basis to the United Kingdom and Japan resulting in the first British and Japanese cosmonauts. In the early 1980s an offer was made to Finland as well, with test pilot :fi:Jyrki Laukkanen|Jyrki Laukkanen mentioned as one of potential Finnish cosmonauts. The pilots of the Test Flight refused on the grounds that participation would not benefit the Flight or test pilot activity in any way. No further offers were made to Finland regarding the matter.

Manned missions

DatePrimeBackupCountryMissionSpace station
2 March 1978Vladimír RemekOldřich Pelčák
Czechoslovakia		Soyuz 28
Salyut 6
27 June 1978Mirosław HermaszewskiZenon Jankowski
Poland		Soyuz 30
Salyut 6
26 August 1978Sigmund JähnEberhard Köllner
GDR		Soyuz 31
Salyut 6
10 April 1979Georgi IvanovAleksandr Aleksandrov
Bulgaria		Soyuz 33
Salyut 6
26 May 1980Bertalan FarkasBéla Magyari
Hungary		Soyuz 36
Salyut 6
23 July 1980Phạm TuânBùi Thanh Liêm
Vietnam		Soyuz 37
Salyut 6
18 September 1980Arnaldo Tamayo MéndezJosé López Falcón
Cuba		Soyuz 38
Salyut 6
23 March 1981Jügderdemidiin GürragchaaMaidarjavyn Ganzorig
Mongolia		Soyuz 39
Salyut 6
14 May 1981Dumitru PrunariuDumitru Dediu
Romania		Soyuz 40
Salyut 6
24 June 1982Jean-Loup ChrétienPatrick Baudry
France		Soyuz T-6
Salyut 7
2 April 1984Rakesh SharmaRavish Malhotra
India		Soyuz T-11
Salyut 7
22 July 1987Muhammed Ahmed FarisMunir Habib Habib
Syria		Soyuz TM-3
Mir
7 June 1988Aleksandr AleksandrovKrasimir Stoyanov
Bulgaria		Soyuz TM-5
Mir
29 August 1988Abdul Ahad MohmandMohammad Dauran Ghulam Masum
Afghanistan		Soyuz TM-6
Mir
26 November 1988Jean-Loup ChrétienMichel Tognini
France		Soyuz TM-7
Mir
2 December 1990Toyohiro AkiyamaRyoko Kikuchi
Japan		Soyuz TM-11
Mir
18 May 1991Helen SharmanTimothy Mace
United Kingdom		Soyuz TM-12
Mir
2 October 1991Franz ViehböckClemens Lothaller
Austria		Soyuz TM-13
Mir

Unmanned missions

In general, most of the films associated with programs are propaganda short TV documents and relations from that era. The two exceptions include Interkosmos from 2006, and cooperation document from 2009 titled "Lotnicy Kosmonauci".
Obliged to Survive, film in Bulgarian about the Bulgarian-Soviet flight Soyz 33: https://www.lentata.com/page_9435.html