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The launch is using a Soyuz-2-1v rocket with a Volga upper stage. This is a three-stage vehicle derived from the workhorse Soyuz family of rockets but optimized to carry smaller payloads. Soyuz-2-1v is based on the larger Soyuz-2-1b, but without the four boosters that make up the first stage of the classic Soyuz design.<\/p>\n
Astronomy
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The Soyuz-2-1b\u2019s first stage is, therefore, the heavily modified version of Soyuz-2-1b\u2019s second stage with its RD-108A engine replaced with a higher-thrust NK-33. The second stage is a Blok-I, the third of the Soyuz-2-1b, while the optional Volga third stage is used to ensure precise delivery of the rocket\u2019s payload into its target orbit, or several different orbits if required.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz 2-1b and 2-1v, along with the Soyuz-2-1a, make up the latest generation of a family of rockets that have served Russia, and formerly the Soviet Union, since the dawn of the space age. Soyuz traces its lineage back to Sergei Korolev\u2019s R-7 missile, which in 1957 became the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to fly. R-7 had a brief career as a missile, its liquid propellants and the resulting need to fuel the rocket immediately before launch quickly rendering it obsolete as new storable-propellant missiles were developed, however it found its niche delivering satellites to orbit.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nSoyuz 2-1v on a previous launch<\/p>\n
A modified version of the R-7 had been used in October 1957 to launch Sputnik, the world\u2019s first satellite, followed by Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika the following month. Later derivatives, with names including Vostok, Voskhod and Molniya launched the first humans into space, carried early probes to the Moon and deployed early scientific, reconnaissance and communications satellites.<\/p>\n
Soyuz was an evolution of the Voskhod rocket, which had to be upgraded to accommodate the new Soyuz spacecraft which was designed to carry three cosmonauts to space stations in low Earth orbit. Its first flight came on 28 November 1966.<\/p>\n
Initial Soyuz launches were dedicated to the Soviet human spaceflight program, with a few modified versions used to deploy a small number of reconnaissance satellites. The introduction of the Soyuz-U in 1973 changed this: the new rocket was intended as a replacement for the earlier Soyuz and also Voskhod, which at that time was still carrying out most military launches. Soyuz-U took over both crewed and uncrewed launches, and by its retirement in 2017 it had flown over 750 times, a record for any orbital carrier rocket.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n