Soyuz Programme - Derivatives

Derivatives

The Zond spacecraft was another derivative, designed to take a crew traveling in a figure-eight orbit around the Earth and the moon but never achieving the degree of safety or political need to be used for such.

Finally, the Progress series of unmanned cargo ships for the Salyut and Mir space laboratories used the automatic navigation and docking mechanism (but not the re-entry capsule) of Soyuz.

As of 2011, Soyuz derivatives provide much of mankind's human spaceflight capability and are used to ferry personnel and supplies to and from the International Space Station. With the retirement of the USA's Space Shuttles, Russia will have the sole proven system for boosting crew to the station.

While not a direct derivative, the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft follows the basic template originally pioneered by Soyuz.