Soyuz T-12 Soyuz T-12 Soyuz T-12 (also known as Salyut 7 EP-4) was the seventh manned spaceflight to the Soviet space station Salyut 7. The name "Soyuz T-12" is also the name of the spacecraft used to launch and land the mission's three-person crew. The mission occurred in July 1984, during the long-duration expedition Salyut 7 EO-3. During the mission, crew member Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to ever perform a spacewalk, and the potential Buran Space shuttle pilot, Igor Volk, was given spaceflight experience. Unlike many Soyuz visiting missions, the Soyuz lifeboats were not swapped, and the crew returned to
Bulgarian cosmonaut program isolated conditions. Only four candidates made it through the second round: Georgi Ivanov Kakalov, Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Georgi Yovchev and Ivan Nakov. A final round of examinations in Moscow in 1978 affirmed Ivanov and Aleksandrov's as the most physically fit, and they were approved as prime and backup, respectively. The Interkosmos mission flight crew consisted of an experienced Soviet cosmonaut as a flight commander, while the member state cosmonaut served as a flight engineer or a "research cosmonaut" whose role was to oversee their assigned experiments and equipment. Training was meticulous and intensive. The first phase included theoretical studies, flight practice