thumb|An isolated drawing of the VA capsule, the crew compartment of the VA spacecraft, with the side hatch opened.

The Vozvraschaemyi Apparat (VA, , GRAU index 11F74) was a Soviet crew capsule, intended to serve as a crewed launch and reentry vehicle. Initially designed for the LK-1 human lunar flyby spacecraft for one of the Soviet crewed lunar programs, then the LK-700 redesign, it was later repurposed for the Almaz military space station program.

The VA spacecraft was capable of independent flight – up to 31 hours in its last incarnation – it needed however to be combined with additional hardware (containing propulsion and storage) to achieve a longer flight duration.

  • A VA spacecraft would have been launched mated together with a Functional Cargo Block (FGB) to resupply an Almaz station, in both crewed and uncrewed flights; This combination was known as the TKS spacecraft.

The VA spacecraft consisted of three main parts:

  • The VA capsule, which formed the pressurized habitable section for the crew
  • The NO front compartment (, lit. "nose compartment"), housing the deorbit block (BSO), additional batteries, communication equipment, the parachute and soft landing engines
  • The SAS launch escape system () – similar to Soyuz and Apollo – mounted on top of the nose section, jettisoned after first stage had burned out

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov called the Almaz VA return capsule "our Apollo".

Kosmos 881 and Kosmos 882

VA 009A/1 (#009P) and VA 009/1 (#009L): Orbital test of a pair of two VA spacecraft Kosmos 881 and Kosmos 882 in 1976-12-15 that started jointly and reentered separately.

Kosmos 929

VA 009A/2 test flight on 1977-07-17. The reentry module was refurbished and launched again on 1978-03-30 as Kosmos 998 .

Kosmos 937 and Kosmos 938

VA 009A/P (#009P) and VA 009P/2 (#009L): Launched on 1977-08-05. Launch vehicle failure forty seconds into the flight on a suborbital test of two VA spacecraft. VA #009L is destroyed in the resulting booster explosion, VA #009P is rescued by the Proton SAS abort system and is recovered safely.

Kosmos 997 and Kosmos 998

VA 009A/P2 and VA 009P/2 (009A/2): On 1978-03-30 pair of two VA spacecraft Kosmos 997 and Kosmos 998 that started jointly and reentered separately

Kosmos 1096 and Kosmos 1097

VA #103 and VA #008: On 1979-04-20 the Proton carrier rocket suffered an on pad abort and did not lift off. Capsule VA #103 was lost.

Kosmos 1100 and Kosmos 1101

VA 102A (#102P) and VA 102 (#102L): On 1979-05-22 pair of two VA spacecraft Kosmos 1100 and Kosmos 1101 that started jointly and reentered separately

TKS missions

Source: As of 2016 Excalibur Almaz is defunct. Three of its four VA spacecraft, none of which were ever launched by the company, were resold at auction, while the fourth was placed on permanent display at the Isle of Man Motor Museum in 2021.

See also

  • Almaz
  • TKS Spacecraft
  • Encyclopedia Astronautica:
  • LK-1, with an image of an assembled translunar spacecraft<!-- LK-1?? LK-700?? Who knows!! -->
  • Almaz APOS
  • TKS
  • RussianSpaceWeb.com:
  • Almaz
  • TKS
  • Sven Grahn: The Almaz Space Station Program
  • Smithsonian – National Air and Space Museum: Merkur Capsule – Image Detail, showing an VA capsule and its interior
  • Novosti Kosmonavtiki: Другой корабль (Online at archive.org, in Russian) The other spacecraft; The 25th anniversary of the first TKS flight.

References