A Soviet basic space capsule, consisting of three modules (orbiter, descent, and instrumentation), and carrying a crew of one to three. It has been flown on several dozen missions, and is capable of precision targeting to soft-land in C Asia (contrasting with the US ocean-recovery technique). It has been used to ferry crew to and from Salyut and, later, Mir space stations with which docking takes place. The first flight was in 1967, when its pilot, V Komarov, was killed in a landing accident. Soyuz 19 docked with the Apollo spacecraft in Earth orbit after its rendezvous (Jul 1975). There was a notable launch accident (Sep 1983) in which the crew of Soyuz T-10A ejected to safety as the launch vehicle exploded. The Soyuz spacecraft is being used for crew return and transfer to the International Space Station.
Soyuz (Russian: Союз, pronounced sah-YOUS, meaning "union") is a series of spacecraft designed by Sergey Korolyov for the Soviet Union's space program. The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraft design and were originally built as part of the Soviet Manned Lunar program. The spacecraft are launched by the Soyuz launch vehicle, as part of the Soyuz program and the later missions of the Zond program. The first unmanned launch of the Soyuz was on November 28, 1966. The first manned launch of the Soyuz was on April 23, 1967.
Design
A Soyuz spacecraft consists of three parts: from front to back, a roughly spherical orbital module, a small smooth reentry module, and a cylindrical service module with solar panels attached. By moving as much as possible into the orbital module, which does not have to be shielded or decelerated during atmospheric re-entry, the Soyuz is both larger and lighter than the Apollo spacecraft's command module. the three-part Soyuz provided the same crew with nine cubic meters of living space, an airlock, and a service module for the mass of the Apollo capsule alone.
Soyuz can carry up to three cosmonauts and provide life support for them for up to 3.2 days.
The vehicle is protected during launch by a nose fairing, which is jettisoned after passing through the atmosphere.
The forepart of the spacecraft is the orbital module. This separation also lets the orbital module be customized to the mission with less risk to the life-critical descent module.
The descent module is used for launch and the journey back to Earth. That is why it was decided to go with the 'headlight' shape that the Soyuz uses - a hemispherical forward area joined by a barely angled cone (seven degrees) to a classic spherical section heat shield.
At the back of the vehicle is the service module. A non-pressurized part of the service module contains the main engine and a spare: liquid-fuel propulsion systems for maneuvering in orbit and initiating the descent back to Earth.
Variants
The first manned version of the Soyuz was called 7K-OK. Cosmonauts had to spacewalk to the other spacecraft, as done on Soyuz 4 and 5.
The 7K-L1 was designed to launch men from the Earth to circle the moon.
The next manned version of the Soyuz was the 7K-OKS. This was designed for space station flights and now had a docking port that allowed internal transfer between spacecraft. During the reentry of the second flight, Soyuz 11, the crew were killed when the capsule depressurised during the re-entry phase.
The complete redesign that resulted led to the 7K-T.
A modified version of this spacecraft flew on Soyuz 13 where instead of the docking system was a large Orion 2 astrophysical camera for imaging the sky and Earth.
Another modification was the 7K-T/A9 used for the flights to the military Almaz space station.
The Soyuz ASTP spacecraft was designed for use during the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. The Soyuz ASTP featured new solar panels for increased mission length, an androgynous universal docking mechanism instead of the standard male mechanism and modifications to the environmental control system to lower the cabin pressure to 0.68 atmospheres (69 kPa) prior to docking with Apollo. The last flight of this version, Soyuz 22 again replaced the docking port with a camera.
The next major redesign was the Soyuz T version (T - транспортный, Transportnyi meaning transport). It featured solar panels allowing longer missions, a revised Igla rendezvous system and new translation/attitude thruster system on the Service module.
The Soyuz TM crew transports (M - модифицированный, Modifitsirovannyi meaning modified) were introduced in 1986 to service the Mir space station. It added to the Soyuz T new docking and rendezvous, radio communications, emergency and integrated parachute/landing engine systems. The new Kurs rendezvous and docking system permitted the Soyuz TM to maneuver independently of the station, without the station making "mirror image" maneuvers to match unwanted translations introduced by earlier models' aft-mounted attitude control.
A slightly modified Soyuz TMA is now also being used (A - антропометрический, Antropometricheskii meaning anthropometric).
The unmanned Progress spacecraft were derived from Soyuz and are used for servicing space stations. The Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft is also heavily influenced by the design of the Soyuz. In 2004, Russian space officials announced that the Soyuz will be replaced by early 2011 with the new Kliper and Parom spacecrafts. However, since then the Kliper appears to have been indefinitely postponed due to lack of funding from government, and it has been announced that the Soyuz will receive an upgrade to make it suitable for missions beyond Earth orbit.
Missions
See List of manned space missions as well as the Zond program
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