Following the Apollo–Soyuz mission, 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 Buran-class orbiter to a future US space station.[7]
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 unpiloted research satellite missions, the first crewed Interkosmos mission occurred in February 1978.[6] Joint crewed 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 US or USSR: Vladimír Remek of Czechoslovakia.[5] 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 to space, although the second one did not fly under the Interkosmos program, and the French spationaut Jean-Loup Chrétien flew on two flights.[8]
The Soviet Union also made offers of joint human 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 Jyrki Laukkanen mentioned as one of the potential Finnish cosmonauts. The pilots of the Test Flight (Koelentue) 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.[9][10]
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.
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.)
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.
Films
In general, most of the films associated with programs are short TV documentaries from that era.[citation needed] The two exceptions include (largely fictionalised) Interkosmos from 2006, and cooperation document from 2009 (in Polish) titled Lotnicy Kosmonauci ("Aviators-Cosmonauts").[13]
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.
