On February 23, 1996 Commander Yuri Onufrienko and Flight Engineer Yuri Usachev launched aboard Soyuz TM-23 to begin Mir Mission 21. Astronaut Shannon Lucid would join them in late March when the Space Shuttle mission STS-76 docked with the station.
On one of the seven EVAs of Mir 21, U.S. astronauts walked outside Mir for the first time. On two others, the cosmonauts installed a new solar array on the Kvant module. The last permanent module was added to the complex Priroda, with its large complement of Earth science experiments.
