1.3.3 Original Soyuz Mission Descriptions
Dates are launch to landing.
| Cosmos 133 | November 28-30, 1966 | |
| First flight of the Original Soyuz. It carried no crew. The spacecraft could not be controlled while its main engine was firing, so could not be positioned for reentry. Controllers ordered it to self-destruct when it looked as if it would land in China.[1] | ||
| Launch failure | December 1966 | |
| An on-pad explosion of its Soyuz launch vehicle ended this second test of the
Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz orbital module and descent module were dragged to safety by the launch escape system.[2] | ||
| Cosmos 140 | February 7-9, 1967 | |
| Cosmos 140 was able to follow the nominal Soyuz Earth-orbital mission plan up to reentry. During reentry a maintenance plug in the forward heatshield burned through, causing severe structural damage. The descent module crashed through ice in the Aral Sea and sank in 10 m of water.[3] | ||
| Soyuz 1 | April 23-24, 1967 | |
| Vladimir Komarov Crew code name—Rubin First manned Soyuz spacecraft, meant to play the active role in a docking with a second spacecraft which would have been called Soyuz 2. Soyuz 2 would have carried three cosmonauts, two of whom would have transferred by EVA to Soyuz 1. The mission was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Lenin’s birth. Upon reaching orbit, one of the craft’s two solar arrays failed to deploy. Exhaust residue from the attitude control jets fouled the craft’s ion orientation sensors, making control difficult. The second Soyuz launch was cancelled. Komarov carried out a manual reentry on orbit 18, after a failed attempt at an automated reentry on orbit 17. During descent, a “pressure design flaw” prevented the parachute from deploying properly. The Soyuz 1 descent module crashed and cosmonaut Komarov was killed.[4] | ||
| Cosmos 186 | October 27-31, 1967 |
| Cosmos 188 | October 30-November 2, 1967 | |
| Automated docking between two unmanned Soyuz. Cosmos 186, launched first, was the active spacecraft.[5] | ||
