On February 11, 1985, Salyut 7, the only orbital space station in the world designed by the USSR, stopped responding to the signals sent by ground control. The radio communication was interrupted and there was no data regarding the orientation and location of the station. It meant that the station was in the state of free falling…

There was a need for the first manual docking with the space station in history, identification of the cause of the malfunction and its elimination. To save the station and avoid the disaster, on June 6, 1985, it was decided to send two astronauts, Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh from the launch site Baikonur.