Interkosmos

For the film, see Interkosmos (film).

Interkosmos (Russian: Интеркосмос) 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 nations of the Warsaw Pact, CoMEcon, and other socialist nations like Afghanistan, Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam. In addition, pro-Soviet non-aligned nations such as India and Syria participated, and even France, despite it being a capitalist nation and part-time US/NATO ally.

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 and pave the way to the International Space Station.

Beginning in April 1967 with unmanned research satellite missions, the first manned mission occurred in February 1978. Interkosmos missions 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 Asian person in space, Phạm Tuân of Vietnam. Of the countries involved, only Bulgaria sent two cosmonauts in space, though the French spationaut, Jean-Loup Chrétien, flew on two separate flights.

The manned Interkosmos missions also had political goals as a means of strengthening Soviet relations with the Warsaw Pact nations when evidence of discontent in them was raising its head.

Manned missions

  Human spaceflight provider

  participants

Date		Prime	Backup	Country	Mission	Space station
February 3, 1978		Vladimír Remek	Oldřich Pelčák	Czechoslovakia	Soyuz 28	Salyut 6
June 27, 1978		Mirosław Hermaszewski	Zenon Jankowski	Poland	Soyuz 30	Salyut 6
August 26, 1978		Sigmund Jähn	Eberhard Köllner	GDR	Soyuz 31	Salyut 6
April 10, 1979		Georgi Ivanov	Aleksandr Aleksandrov	Bulgaria	Soyuz 33	Salyut 6 (Docking failed)
May 26, 1980		Bertalan Farkas	Béla Magyari	Hungary	Soyuz 36	Salyut 6
July 23, 1980		Tuân Pham	Thanh Liem Bui	Vietnam	Soyuz 37	Salyut 6
September 18, 1980	75px	Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez	Jose Lopez Falcon	Cuba	Soyuz 38	Salyut 6
March 23, 1981		Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa	Maidarjavyn Ganzorig	Mongolia	Soyuz 39	Salyut 6
May 14, 1981		Dumitru Prunariu	Dumitru Dediu	Romania	Soyuz 40	Salyut 6
June 24, 1982		Jean-Loup Chrétien	Patrick Baudry	France	Soyuz T-6	Salyut 7
April 2, 1984		Rakesh Sharma	Ravish Malhotra	India	Soyuz T-11	Salyut 7
July 22, 1987		Muhammed Ahmed Faris		Syria	Soyuz TM-3	Mir
July 6, 1988		Aleksandr Aleksandrov	Krasimir Stoyanov	Bulgaria	Soyuz TM-5	Mir
August 29, 1988		Abdul Ahad Mohmand	Mohammad Dauran Ghulam Masum	Afghanistan	Soyuz TM-6	Mir
November 26, 1988		Jean-Loup Chrétien	Michel Tognini	France	Soyuz TM-7	Mir

Unmanned missions

East German postage stamp

• 1970 November 28 - Vertikal-1 Aeronomy/Ionosphere/Solar mission.
• 1971 August 20 - Vertikal-2 Solar Ultraviolet/Solar X-ray mission.
• 1972 April 7 - Interkosmos 6 - Investigation of primary cosmic radiation and meteoritic particles in near-earth outer space.
• 1973 April 4 - Interkosmos 9 "Copernicus-500" - satellite of cooperation of the Polish People's Republic and Soviet Union to study the Sun and ionosphere. Orbit around 200–1550 km.
• 1975 June 3 - Interkosmos 14
• 1975 September 2 - Vertikal-3 Solar Ultraviolet/Solar X-ray mission.
• 1976 - Re-entry Vehicle Test mission.
• 1976 June 19 - Interkosmos 15. Testing of new systems and components of satellite under space flight conditions.
• 1977 March 29 - Investigation of the upper atmosphere and outer space.
• 1977 June 17 - Signe 3 - Twenty French specialists worked on the satellite.
• 1977 August 30 - Vertikal-5 Solar Ultraviolet/Solar X-ray mission.
• 1977 September 24 - Interkosmos 17 - Investigation of energetic charged and neutral particles and micrometeorite fluxes in circumterrestrial space.
• 1977 October 25 - Vertikal-6 Ionosphere/Solar mission?.
• 1978 October 24 - Interkosmos 18 - Conduct of complex investigations on the interaction between the magnetosphere and ionosphere of the earth. Cooperation with the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic, the Polish People's Republic and the Socialist Republic of Romania.
• 1978 October 24 - Magion 1 - The Czechoslovak satellite MAGION was launched into orbit by the Soviet spacecraft Interkosmos 18
• 1978 November 3 - Vertikal-7 Ionosphere/Solar mission
• 1979 February 27 - Interkosmos 19 - Cooperation with the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic and the Polish People's Republic.
• 1979 September 26 - Vertikal-8 Solar Ultraviolet/Solar X-ray mission.
• 1979 November 1 - Interkosmos 20. (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic and the Socialist Republic of Romania).
• 1981 - Re-entry Vehicle Test mission.

A commemorative coin issued in Mongolia

• 1981 February 6 - Interkosmos 21 - (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic and the Socialist Republic of Romania)
• 1981 August 7 - Interkosmos 22 "Bulgaria-1300" (People's Republic of Bulgaria).
• 1981 August 28 - Vertikal-9 Solar Ultraviolet/Solar X-ray mission.
• 1981 September 21 - Oreol 3 - Developed by Soviet and French specialists under the joint Soviet-French project 'Arkad-3'.
• 1985 April 26 - Interkosmos 23 - Developed by scientists and specialists of the USSR and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
• 1986 December 18 - Kosmos 1809
• 1989 September 28 - Magion 2 - Magion 2 forms a part of the scientific programme of Interkosmos 24 (project Aktivnyj) Execution of the scientific programme of the 'Aktivny' project in conjunction with Interkosmos-24, permitting simultaneous spatially separating investigations of plasma processes in circumterrestrial space.
• 1989 September 28 - Interkosmos 24 - US participation, in cooperation with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania (the international scientific project entitled 'Aktivny'). Carrying the Czechoslovak Magion-2 satellite.
• 1991 December 18 - Interkosmos 25 - experiments from Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary. Comprehensive study of the effects of artificial impact of modulated electron flows and plasma beams on the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the Earth (forming part of the Apex international scientific project, conducted jointly with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.)
• 1991 December 28 - Magion 3 [1]
• 1994 March 2 - Interkosmos 26 - Conduct of comprehensive investigations of the sun under the Coronas-I international project developed by Russian and Ukrainian experiments in cooperation with specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, France, and the United Kingdom. PRAMOD KUMAR

See also

• Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, the first joint U.S.–Soviet space flight in July 1975.
• Bion satellites, a series of biology research satellites from 1966 to 1996 – participation of the United States from 1975 to 1996.
• Vega 1 and Vega 2, two Solar System probes, in the joint vega program between the Soviet Union, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, the German Democratic Republic ("East Germany"), and the Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") in December 1984.

Films

Generally the most films associated with programs are propaganda short TV documents and relations from that era. Except for fictional Interkosmos from 2006, and cooperation document from 2009(in Polish and maybe in other languages too) titled "Lotnicy Kosmonauci"(Aviators-Cosmonauts).