Cosmonauts Alexander Viktorenko, Yelena Kondakova and Valery Polyakov left the Mir orbiter and entered a Soyuz TM-20 rocket and undocked it. They then drifted 160 meters away from the space station for 26 minutes before redocking, Mission Control spokesman Nikolai Kryuchkov said.
"The operation went smoothly, just as scheduled," he said.
U.S. space expert James Oberg said from Houston that Wednesday's test was vital to the scheduled linkup of a U.S. space shuttle in June.
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