A long history of orbital rendezvous
Soyuz names a launcher family and a separate spacecraft family. Together they connect several generations of space stations.
The Soyuz launcher first flew in 1966 with an uncrewed spacecraft. The programme suffered difficult beginnings, including Vladimir Komarov’s death during the return of Soyuz 1 in 1967.
Successive versions later supported Salyut, Mir and the ISS. The same technical lineage also launched satellites and Progress cargo vehicles.
Selected representative missions; crew names belong to the flight shown.
The Soviet spacecraft docked with Apollo in a symbolic meeting between the two space powers.
The first permanent ISS crew reached the station aboard the Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft.
Dates follow the days reported by the source agencies, generally in local time; the UTC day can differ. Crews belong to the selected missions, not every flight in the family.
The family demonstrates how an architecture can evolve progressively instead of being replaced entirely with each generation.
First flight or first test of the family, including unsuccessful or suborbital attempts.
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