He spent 115 days on the Russian space station Mir, as crew commander, after being launched on a Soyuz mission craft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in March 1995. He returned to Earth aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis, landing at the US Kennedy Space Center in July 1995. In 2001 he was assigned to join the third resident crew of the International Space Station. Dezhurov was selected as a cosmonaut in 1987 and performed nine space walks before retiring in 2004.