Background
The Soviet space program had experienced great success in its early years, but by the mid-1960s the pace of success had grown sluggish. The Soyuz project was intended to rejuvenate the program with docking capability for spacecraft: forging a direct physical link between two independent craft would be the basis for the Soviet space station program. The maned spacecraft Soyuz 1 was launched with the expectation of "union" with the manned Soyuz 2 craft, but even before the second craft was launched, it became apparent that the Soyuz 2 mission had to be canceled before the landing of Soyuz 1 – this saved the lives of the crew of Soyuz 2. Soyuz 1 ended in disaster, as Commander Vladimir Komarov was killed on April 23, 1967 by a faulty parachute system and the Soyuz 2 mission would have flown with with the same defective parachute system as Soyuz 1. As a result revised spacecraft were built for redesigned Soyuz 2 and Soyuz 3 missions in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Soyuz 3
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