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 developed for Aleksandrov's flight are now used on the International Space Station and on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The Bulgarian SVET plant growth system later installed on the Mir was used to grow wheat and vegetables in space for the first time. After the collapse of Communism and the severe reduction of science funding, Bulgaria's cosmonaut programme was largely shelved. Much of the infrastructure became defunct. In 2011, Georgi Ivanov urged the government to reboot the human spaceflight programme. Krasimir Stoyanov has suggested that domestic plant growth and radiation monitoring equipment could allow a Bulgarian cosmonaut to join a