Soyuz

Soyuz was conceived in 1960 as a manoeuvring, docking spacecraft for the Soviet lunar effort. It first flew with a crew on 23 April 1967 and killed its pilot the next morning. Nearly six decades and seven major variants later it is still carrying crews to the International Space Station under a Russian flag rather than a Soviet one, and between the Shuttle retiring in 2011 and Dragon flying in May 2020 it was the only way anybody reached the station at all.

How it went

1. 01

   Vladimir Komarov launched on 23 April 1967 and died on 24 April when the main parachute failed and the reserve fouled the drogue, at the end of a flight that had already lost a solar panel and its attitude control.

2. 02

   Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev died on 30 June 1971 when a valve opened at 168 kilometres and emptied the cabin in under a minute, after which the crew was cut to two so that everyone could wear a pressure suit.

3. 03

   Apollo and Soyuz docked on 17 July 1975, ending the Apollo hardware line and beginning a habit of joint flight that outlasted the Soviet Union itself.

4. 04

   The vehicle was rebuilt roughly every decade, from 7K-OK through Soyuz T, TM, TMA and TMA-M to the Soyuz MS flying now, keeping the shape and replacing everything inside it.

5. 05

   Soyuz MS-29 launched on 14 July 2026 with two Roscosmos cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut aboard, which is what the programme now exists to do.

What it flew

• Soyuz-U

What it cost, what it got

Two fatal accidents and four deaths, followed by the longest run of crewed service any spacecraft has had. It is the only vehicle to have flown continuously across the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, and a joint station programme with the country it was built to beat.

Sources

1. 1Soyuz spacecraft familyRussianSpaceWeb
2. 2Soyuz 1Wikipedia
3. 3Soyuz 11Wikipedia
4. 4Soyuz MS-29Wikipedia