TKS (spacecraft)

TKS (spacecraft)

The TKS spacecraft (Russian: Transportnyi Korabl’ Snabzheniia, Transport Supply Spacecraft, GRAU index 11F72) was a Soviet spacecraft conceived in the late 1960s for resupply flights to the military Almaz space station. The spacecraft was designed for both crewed or autonomous uncrewed cargo resupply flights. While the spacecraft was not used operationally in its intended role – except on four test missions – when the program was canceled, the Functional Cargo Block (FGB) of the TKS spacecraft would later form the basis of several space station modules, including the Zarya FGB module on the International Space Station.

The TKS consisted of two main parts:

• The VA spacecraft (known in the West as the Merkur spacecraft), which was designed to serve as launch and return vehicle for the crew of an Almaz station.
• And the Functional Cargo Block (FGB) which housed the spacecraft's on-orbit maneuvering engines, docking hardware, tanks and a large pressurized cargo compartment for resupply.

The FGB would have been used as the primary orbital maneuvering system for the TKS spacecraft, eliminating the need for fuel transfer. The FGB could also be used alone as an unmanned cargo module without an VA spacecraft; The VA spacecraft on the other hand was also intended to be launched as "Almaz APOS" mated with an Almaz-OPS space station core, instead of a FGB as the primary orbital maneuvering system.

As of August 2009, Excalibur Almaz planned to use the VA capsule as low-cost cargo return vehicles.