Soyuz

A Soyuz taxi flight in October 2021 took a Russian actress and director to the International Space Station for more than a week to film scenes for a movie.

Soyuz MS-20 undocked from the International Space Station at 6:50 p.m. Eastern on 2021-12-19.

Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano launched to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket on 2021-12-08 in a flight brokered by the American space tourism company Space Adventures.

Soyuz MS-20 landed in Kazakhstan at 10:13 p.m. Eastern on 2021-12-19.

Space Adventures is planning another dedicated Soyuz mission to the International Space Station no earlier than 2023 that will include an option for a customer to perform a brief spacewalk.

A Soyuz spacecraft launched on 2021-12-08 carrying two Japanese private astronauts and a Roscosmos cosmonaut for Space Adventures.

The Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft reached orbit nine minutes after liftoff on 2021-12-08.

Before the Soyuz MS-20 flight, Maezawa had announced in 2018 that he would purchase a flight on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for a mission called dearMoon to fly a group of artists around the moon.

StriX-β was originally scheduled to be launched by Exolaunch’s Soyuz-2 rocket in 2021.

Due to a change in the launch schedule of the Soyuz-2 rocket, StriX-β will be launched by Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket in early 2022.

Germany’s OHB System built the two satellites carried on the 2021-12-04 Soyuz launch.

The Soyuz launcher used at the Guiana Space Center is a four-stage vehicle designed with high reliability requirements for manned missions.

Prior to VS26, 14 of the 26 Galileo satellites already in orbit had been launched by Soyuz between 2011 and 2016, and 12 had been launched by Ariane 5 between 2016 and 2018.

The medium-lift Soyuz launcher is produced by Progress Space Rocket Center, which is part of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Arianespace has orbited over 1,000 satellites since 1980 using the Ariane, Soyuz, and Vega launchers from French Guiana, Baikonur, and Vostochny.

Arianespace’s 13th launch of 2021 was the 8th Soyuz mission of the year and launched the Galileo FOC 23-24 satellites into Medium Earth Orbit (MEO).

Soyuz and Ariane 6 are planned to orbit six additional Galileo FOC satellites.

A Russian antisatellite weapon test on 2021-11-15 created thousands of pieces of debris that led ISS crews to shelter in their Soyuz and Crew Dragon vehicles for several hours immediately after the test.