Soviet, Bulgarian Cosmonauts Return

A three-man Soviet-Bulgarian cosmonaut crew landed in Soviet Kazakhstan on Friday, 10 days after they were launched to the Mir orbiting station.

Anatoly Solovyov, 40, and Viktor Savinykh, 48, both Soviets, and Alexander Alexandrov, 36, of Bulgaria, touched down in a descent module 120 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan, a remote site in the Central Asian region from which the crew was launched June 7, the official Tass news agency said.

“The three spacemen felt well after landing,” Tass said.

It said Solovyov, the mission commander, and Alexandrov, the chief researcher, have been awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” for courage. Savinykh, a space veteran named “Hero of the Soviet Union” after each of his two previous missions, received an Order of Lenin, the Soviet Union’s highest award, for his work as flight engineer.

Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov, remained aboard Mir, where they have been since December. They are expected to remain in space for a year, breaking the world record of 326 days set last year by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko.

Together with the Soviet-Bulgarian crew, Titov and Manarov performed nearly 50 experiments in a weeklong program. They created new metal alloys, isolated protein crystals, purified the drug Interferon, mapped stars, examined pollution of Bulgarian cities and shores and tested their own performances at computer games.