tm-19

In 1993, he also started training to fly the first of two joint European-Russian missions to the space station Mir, called Euromir 95. In 1994, he was the first ESA astronaut to fly into space with Russia, on board Soyuz TM-20, and returned to Earth on Soyuz TM-19. During his three spaceflights he spent a total of 49 days, 21 hours and 38 minutes in space.

With the safe landing of the Soyuz TM-19 capsule on 4 November 1994 near Arkalyk in Kazakhstan, ESA astronaut Ulf Merbold
completed his 31-day mission on board the Russian Space Station Mir - the longest mission of a European astronaut so far.

This first mission, referred to as EUROMIR 94, forms part of ESA's Columbus precursor flight programme.