A long-term flight of a Russian cosmonaut was scheduled for the MIR space station from the end of 1993 to the beginning of 1995. The extraction of basic knowledge regarding long-term effects of weightlessness during a sojourn in space would be possible through the first-time sojourn of a human in space for a minimum of 14 months without break.
On the basis of long-lasting successful collaboration in the area of space medicine between the Austrian scientific institutes and the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IMBP) in Moscow, within the framework of AUSTROMIR-91, the Austrian scientists for medical experiments were invited to participate in this unique long-term flight.
