Russia debuts new rocket with maiden Soyuz-5 launch

Date:
Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:25:53 +0000

Description:
Russias brand new Soyuz-5 rocket made its first flight on Saturday, lifting off from the The post Russia debuts new rocket with maiden Soyuz-5 launch appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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Russias brand new Soyuz-5 rocket made its first flight on Saturday, lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Thursday on a suborbital demonstration mission with a dummy payload that will pave the way for its entry into service.



This launch is something the Baikonur Cosmodrome has not witnessed for many decades the debut of a new rocket rather than a modification of an existing launch vehicle.



While most of Russias active launch vehicles are iterations on well-established designs a notable exception being the more modern Angara, which does not launch from Baikonur these can only be evolved so far.
Soyuz-5 will help to support the countrys ambitions in space over the coming decades.

Despite its name, Soyuz-5 bears no relation or resemblance to the Soyuz
family of rockets, the descendants of Sergei Korolevs R-7 missile that first flew in 1957.

The current generation of this family, Soyuz-2, is the workhorse of Russias space program, supporting crew and cargo launches to the International Space Station as well as military and scientific satellite deployments.

The name Soyuz, , is the Russian word for Union , as in the Soviet Union, as it was when Korolevs Soyuz was designed. Soyuz-5 began development in 2015, with the project codenamed Fenix ( Phoenix ). The rocket has also been known as Irtysh , after a river that runs through Kazakhstan and Russia, and Sunkar
Kazakh for Falcon . The rocket had a difficult road from the drawing board
to the launch pad, facing many changes in design and purpose as well as naming.

The name Irtysh reflected a time when a series of rockets were being considered, all named after rivers: in this guise, Irtysh would have served
as a two-stage medium-capacity launch vehicle, while also becoming the basis of the first stage of the much larger and more powerful Yenisey and Don vehicles.

The key raison dtre for Soyuz-5 was Russias need to replace the Zenit family of rockets after a continued partnership with Ukraine became untenable. Zenit was developed by Mikhail Yangels Yuzhnoye design bureau and built by the Yuzhmash manufacturing plant during the Soviet era.

After the fall of the USSR, these companies found themselves in Ukraine but continued to work with the Russian space program until relations between the two countries broke down with Russias 2014 occupation of Crimea. The final Zenit launch took place in 2017, using previously-completed hardware.

Having first flown in 1985, the two-stage Zenit-2 was one of the youngest rockets in Russias fleet. With a payload capacity greater than Soyuz but less than the larger Proton, it filled an important gap in capability, although it enjoyed more success in the commercial launch market than with government missions.

With the addition of a Blok-DM third stage, the Zenit-3SL was integral to the Sea Launch partnership between Russia, Ukraine, and the US commercial sector, flying the rocket from Odyssey , a converted oil platform stationed on the equator.

The Baiterek project, an abandoned joint venture between Russia and
Kazakhstan to bring Angara launches to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, was another precursor to Soyuz-5.

This had been put on hold due to significant cost increases and delays to the development of Angara, but the lower cost of Soyuz-5, combined with the opportunity to reuse existing infrastructure, became the foundation of a new partnership. Russia and Kazakhstan formed a new joint company in 2016 to facilitate launches from Baikonur, including commercial payloads.

Soyuz-5 has been designed to use the existing Zenit launch pads Site 45/1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Sea Launch platform with modifications
rather than a complete rebuild. Kazakhstan already owned an unused Zenit assembly and test hall, Site 42, as well as the launch facilities at Site 45. After the final Zenit launch, Roscosmos terminated its lease, and responsibility for the facilities reverted to Kazakhstan.

It was from Site 45/1 that Soyuz-5 made its maiden flight. This was originally one of two Zenit launch pads at Baikonur: the adjacent Site 45/2 was destroyed in October 1990 during only the second launch from that pad when the Zenit-2s first stage engine failed a few seconds into flight, the vehicle fell back onto the launch pad and exploded.

Site 45/1 was used for all other Zenit launches except Sea Launch, with its most recent mission prior to the Soyuz-5s debut having been the final Zenit launch in 2017.

Soyuz-5 is built by the RKTs Progress company in Samara, which also manufactures the Souyz-2. Assembly of the first Soyuz-5 rocket began in 2019, despite some of its systems still being in the test phase. A two-stage vehicle, it stands 62.5 m tall, with a diameter of about 4.1 m.

It is slightly wider than Zenit, which had a 3.9-m diameter, with the increased diameter chosen to speed up development by allowing existing
tooling from the Proton rocket to be reused.

The first stage is powered by an RD-171MV engine, which is a single engine with four combustion chambers. It is derived from the RD-171 used on Zenit, but using only Russian components and with a new control system. Delivering a thrust of over 7.8 meganewtons, with a vacuum specific impulse of 37.2 sec,
it is one of the most powerful rocket engines ever built.

The second stage uses a single RD-0124MS engine built by the Chemical Automatics Design Bureau, with a thrust of about 592 kilonewtons and a vacuum specific impulse of 359 sec. Both stages are fueled by kerosene, which is oxidized by liquid oxygen (LOX).

For missions that require it, Soyuz-5 can fly with an additional third stage. Versions of the Blok-DM and Fregat upper stages, both of which were used on Zenit, can be flown on Soyuz-5 if mission requirements necessitate it. A four-meter-diameter fairing encloses the payload at the nose of the rocket.

Very few details of Saturdays test flight were published ahead of the launch, except that the mission would carry a dummy payload and would be a suborbital launch. The first stage was expected to separate about three minutes after liftoff, with fairing separation five seconds later.

Second stage shutdown was expected to be about nine and a half minutes into the flight, with the payload separating a few seconds later. Notices to
Airmen (NOTAMs) published ahead of the launch indicated that the second stage and payload were expected to re-enter over the Pacific Ocean, off the east coast of Japan.

Launch Photo via Roscosmos livestream.



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/04/russia-maiden-soyuz-5-launch/


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