The World - News from Sept. 1, 1988

A three-man Soviet-Afghan cosmonaut team, including a physician, docked their Soyuz capsule with the Mir space station, joining two cosmonauts headed for a space endurance record. Vladimir Lyakhov, physician Valery Polyakov and Afghan pilot Abdul Ahad Mohammed linked their craft to the Mir, completing a 49-hour flight from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Central Asia. The original Mir crew of Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov, now in their ninth month of flight, will remain until the end of the year to eclipse Yuri Romanenko’s space endurance record of 326 days set last year. A top Soviet space official announced that Dr. Polyakov will also remain in space for 12 months.