The Soviet Union launches the Kristall module, whose pre-programmed systems bring it to the Mir space station for an automated docking. With facilities for material science experiments, additional gyroscopic stabilizers to keep Mir properly oriented, and other equipment, Kristall also features an extended docking port intended to allow the Soviet-made Buran shuttle to dock at Mir. In time, that docking port will allow a space shuttle to berth at Mir… but not the one its designers anticipate.
This is the last expansion made to Mir prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the last new module to arrive for five years.
Alan Silvestri’s 
The week-long national syndication window opens for 
Former ELO frontman, producer and songwriter Jeff Lynne releases his first solo album, 
The week-long national syndication window opens for 
Four years after the band’s formal breakup, CBS Records releases (with cooperation from frontman Jeff Lynne) 
Encouraged by the public interest in 
CBS airs the 53rd episode of Ron Koslow’s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, starring Ron Perlman, Jo Anderson, and Roy Dotrice. Suzie Plakson guest stars.
Telstar Records re-releases 
The Soviet Union launches Soyuz TM-10, carrying cosmonauts Gennadi Manakov and Gennady Strekalov to space station Mir for a long-duration stay in orbit. After a 130-day stay aboard Mir, the TM-10 crew returns, bringing with them Japanese TV reporter Toyohiro Akiyama, who would arrive aboard Mir via Soyuz TM-11 in December. Strekalov will return to serve another tour aboard Mir in the 1990s, becoming the first Russian cosmonaut to arrive in a Soyuz and return home in an American space shuttle.
Power pop supergroup Jellyfish releases its debut album 
Launched via space shuttle in May 1989, the long-delayed Magellan space probe reaches the planet Venus after an unusually long voyage (15 months) and begins an orbital insertion maneuver. Where most missions to Venus have reached the planet in only a few months, Magellan has had to make do without the more powerful Centaur liquid-fueled booster stage, resulting in a journey of a year and three months. (The Centaur upper stage had been cancelled after the Challenger disaster because it was felt that carrying an additional liquid-fueled rocket in a shuttle cargo bay was too risky.) Magellan is placed into an elliptical orbit, completely circling Venus every three hours, where it will conduct high-resolution radar mapping of the surface at the closest point in its orbit, and transmitting the resulting data to Earth while furthest from Venus. The first phase of the mapping mission will last through 1991.
Columbia Records releases 
Catalogued, restored, remastered, and released for the first time ever, 
Warner Bros. releases 
NASA’s Magellan space probe, orbiting the planet Venus, has completed a checkout phase and begins its primary mapping mission, intended to gather data of the Venusian surface as high resolution as one kilometer per pixel. Rather than using visible light – which would yield only images of Venus’ dense clouds – Magellan uses radar to map the planet’s blistering hot surface. Launched in May 1989 via space shuttle, Magellan will continue mapping the surface of Venus through May 1991.
The first episode of the superhero series The Flash, based on the DC Comics character, premieres on CBS, starring John Wesley Shipp (Dawson’s Creek) and Amanda Pays (Max Headroom). Tim Thomerson and Lycia Naff (Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest star.
Apollon Music, via its Compusic imprint, releases 
The week-long national syndication window opens for 
NBC airs the 
The first episode of Dracula: The Series premieres in syndication in the United States, based very loosely on Bram Stoker’s literary vampire lore, starring Bernard Behrens (NPR’s Star Wars radio series), Geordie Johnson (Largo Winch, Copper), and Mia Kirshner (The L Word, Star Trek: Discovery, Defiance). The series’ half-hour episodes were filmed in Luxembourg.
Nintendo releases the 
The week-long national syndication window opens for 
The pilot movie of the science fiction crime drama Super Force is broadcast in syndication in North America, starring Ken Olandt, Larry B. Scott, and Patrick Macnee (The Avengers). All future episodes will be 30 minutes long (with commercials), and in future reruns, the two-hour premiere will be broken up into four episodes: parts one and two of A Hero’s Welcome, and parts one and two of Too Late The Hero.
NBC airs the 32nd episode of Donald Bellisario’s science fiction series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. Andrea Thompson (Babylon 5), Tia Carrere (Relic Hunter), and Patrick Warburton (The Tick) guest star.
The 53rd episode of the syndicated series Superboy, starring Gerard Christopher and Stacy Haiduk, airs. Sherman Howard guest stars as Lex Luthor in the third season premiere, which is written by Mike Carlin and Andy Helfer. “The Adventures of…” is added to the series title for the remainder of the show’s run.