Recent Missions
Lately Soyuz-U vehicles have been used by the Russian Federal Space Agency mostly with Progress-M robotic cargo spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).
Although the 11A511U is generally very reliable, occasional failures have happened including the October 2002 launch of a Foton satellite which crashed near the pad at Plesetsk after the Blok D strap-on suffered an engine malfunction. One person on the ground was killed.
The most recent Soyuz-U mission failed to launch Progress M-12M to the ISS on 24 August 2011 which experienced an upper stage problem and broke up over Siberia. It was the first time a Progress spacecraft had failed to reach orbit.
Its most recent non-Progress launch was on 16 April 2010, when a Soyuz-U was used to carry the Kosmos 2462 spacecraft to orbit. As of August 2011, a total of 745 Soyuz-U launch vehicles were launched, with 21 launch failures and 724 successes (2.8% failure rate).
Read more about this topic: Soyuz-U
Famous quotes containing the word missions:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)