 right|130px|the interkosmos crest. interkosmos () was a soviet space program, designed to help the soviet union's allies with manned and unmanned space missions. the program included the allied east-european nations of the warsaw pact, comecon, and other socialist nations like afghanistan, cuba, mongolia, and vietnam. in addition, pro-soviet non-aligned nations such as india and syria participated, and even france, despite it being a capitalist nation and part-time us/nato ally. following the apolloâsoyuz test project, there were even talks between nasa and intercosmos in the 1970s about a "shuttle-salyut" program to fly space shuttle missions to a salyut space station, with later talks in the 1980s even considering flights of the future soviet shuttles from the buran programme to a future us space station. while the shuttle-salyut program never materialized during the existence of the soviet intercosmos program, after the dissolution of the soviet union the shuttleâmir program would follow in these footsteps and pave the way to the international space station. begun in april 1967 with unmanned research satellite missions, the first manned mission occurred in february 1978. interkosmos missions enabled 14 non-soviet cosmonauts to participate in soyuz space flights between 1978 and 1988. the program was responsible for sending into space the first citizen of a country other than the usa or ussr; vladimÃ­r remek of czechoslovakia. interkosmos also resulted in the first black and hispanic person in space, arnaldo tamayo mÃ©ndez of cuba, and the first asian person in space, pháº¡m tuÃ¢n of vietnam. of the countries involved, only bulgaria sent two cosmonauts in space. the manned interkosmos missions also had political goals as a means of stren
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