Merkur (spacecraft) - Test Flights

Test Flights

Although the VA was never launched crewed, never together with an Almaz-OPS station, and never to an Almaz-OPS station, it saw several flights, some in the intended TKS spacecraft configuration: To accelerate the man-rating of the TKS and VA spacecraft, eight unmanned VA spacecraft (without FGBs) were launched in pairs, testing two VA spacecraft per test flight. One of these flights was aborted due to the carrier rocket failure, and the VA capsule was successfully carried away from the exploding rocket by the launch escape system.

Another four unmanned VA spacecraft were mated together with an FGB and launched as TKS spacecraft: the solo flight of Kosmos 929, the Kosmos 1267 flight to Salyut 6 and the flights of Kosmos 1443 and Kosmos 1686 to Salyut 7 – the VA spacecraft on the TKS flight of Kosmos 1686 was modified as a no-reentry laboratory segment.

The TKS program would, after these test flights, evolve into the Functional Cargo Block based space station modules, and the VA capsules would no longer be of service in the Soviet Union.