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| A Soyuz TM vessel moored at the Mir station |
Born in the 1960s of the USSR's desire to conquer space and compete with the United States in a delicate Cold War context, the Soyuz (" Union " in Russian) program was initially aimed at sending a Soviet cosmonaut on the moon.
If this lunar mission was finally abandoned a few years later and to date, only NASA astronauts have walked the surface of our natural satellite, the Soyuz program has nevertheless had multiple opportunities through civilian and military projects and is still today one of the only ones to be able to send men and women into space.
Meanwhile, private US solutions from SpaceX and Boeing, the Soyuz capsule and its launcher are currently the only aircraft to transport crews between the Earth and the International Space Station (ISS) since the shutdown of the US space shuttle in 2011.
Soyuz: a rocket and a spaceship
In Soviet and then Russian astronautics, Soyuz designates two categories of craft: the rocket (launcher) and the inhabited spacecraft (capsule). We will focus here on these two machines since the Soyuz spacecraft is launched exclusively by the Soyuz rocket, from the Baikonur base in Kazakhstan. The launcher has however been used repeatedly for other missions, as we will see in this article.
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| The Soyuz TMA-13 launcher on his launch pad in Baikonur on October 10, 2008 |
Soyuz: synonymous with reliability
A flagship program in the race to conquer space
To know why Soyuz is synonymous with reliability, we will quickly return to its history and that of the conquest of space in the early 60s and even a little earlier.
These historical facts, everyone has already heard about it one day or another. It is from 1957 that the Soviets will launch the Sputnik program, which has been experienced as a real affront by the United States. Indeed, the first successful launch of an artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, suggested that the USSR had sufficient space technology to threaten the United States with a nuclear missile. This launch of October 4, 1957, marks the real beginning of the conquest of space,
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| Yuri Gagarin, the first man to have stayed in space |
A month later, the Sputnik 2 mission will be the first to send a living being in space: the famous dog Laika, who unfortunately will succumb to the trip after a few hours. After several successful launches of the Sputnik satellite, the Soviets are developing the Vostok program, which aims to make the first manned spaceflight and will see Yuri Gagarin become the first man to stay in space on 12 April 1961. The Soviets then quickly chained with the Voskhod program which, unlike the first manned flight, made it possible to make a flight with a crew of three cosmonauts, on October 6, 1964. The second mission of Voskhod will see the very first extra-vehicular exit to be realized.
The first steps of Soyuz
The Soyuz spacecraft will be developed in 1963 and will make its first mission on April 21, 1967. It follows the rocket and the ship Voskhod whose program was stopped after three missions because of the better results obtained at the same time by the Americans with the Gemini program. Soyuz is supposed to exceed the performance of its predecessor and allow the USSR to catch up in the field since the effective missions that launched the race for space.
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| This is what the first Soyuz ships looked like |
Unfortunately, the race for space will precipitate the development of the Soviet and American space programs and the two rival nations will mourn it in 1967. If three astronauts of the Apollo program died of asphyxiation on January 27, 1967, during a rehearsal in view of the Apollo 1 mission on the firing point, the first human loss in space will be suffered by the Soviets, after the tragic flight of Soyuz 1, April 21, 1967.
After several inconclusive tests, the Soviets have everything from even wanted to launch the double mission Soyuz 1. This one consisted of launching two ships in order to make an orbital rendezvous. The failures during the flight of the first ship were catastrophic since Vladimir Komarov, his only occupant will live there as the capsule crashes wildly on land. The launch of the second ship will eventually be canceled.
Soyuz outpaced by the Apollo program
A few months after this catastrophic first, the Soviets will be able to demonstrate the capabilities of the ship by conducting several orbital rendezvous and performing, in 1970, an extended stay of 18 days in low Earth orbit. Afterward, they will develop the unmanned program named Zond, which was supposed to prepare a possible inhabited lunar flight.
If this program allowed them to tour the Moon with the Zond 5 mission in September 1968, it will however quickly lose its interest with the prowess achieved by the Americans who will manage to tread the ground of the Moon on July 20, 1969. The various lunar projects of the Soviets will be abandoned in 1974 with the arrival of Valentin Glushko at the head of the Soviet space program.
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| A Soyuz vessel moored at Salient station 7 |
From then on, the Soviets will concentrate on other objectives, notably with the launch of space stations Salient in 1971 (the first station to be placed in orbit using a Proton rocket) as well as Mir to from 1986. The Soyuz rockets and vessels will be used to ensure the relief of the crews of Salyut and Mir. The Soyuz T-6 spacecraft will be the first to see a Frenchman, Jean-Loup Chrétien, go into space in 1982.
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| The Apollo ship and its mooring module is seen from Soyuz |
This time also saw the first collaboration between the United States and the Soviet Union with a joint Apollo-Soyuz space mission in 1975. Subsequently and with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Russia will begin a broad collaboration with Americans, still in progress today since NASA continues to take advantage of Roscosmos services to transport these astronauts to the ISS.
A program that shows 98% success
Despite accidents to be deplored, especially with the death of the crew during Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 missions , as well as failed launches (without loss of human life) as was the case last October with the Soyuz MS-10 capsule , the Soyuz program is currently the one with the best success rate with nearly 98% success. From 1967 to the present day, the various versions of Soyuz have been launched a total of 138 times and have continued to be acclaimed by NASA since the withdrawal of the American Space Shuttle, despite the imminent direct competition from SpaceX and Boeing.
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| The Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft approaching the ISS in 2006 |
With regard to the Soyuz launcher, the latter counts the most number of launches in the world since, in 2018, more than 1800 Soyuz rockets have already been shot. Only three inhabited Soyuz launches were impacted by incidents without loss of human life: Soyuz 18a in 1975, Soyuz T-10-1 in 1983, and Soyuz MS-10 on 11 October 2018.
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