- calendar_today August 20, 2025
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Russia plans to fly its latest rocket, the Soyuz-5, before the end of this year. That was the message Dmitry Bakanov, director of the state-run space agency Roscosmos, gave to Russian state news agency TASS in a recent interview.
“Yes, we are planning for December,” Bakanov said, according to TASS. “We are doing the last working tests for the flight unit. Everything is ready for the first flight.”
The Soyuz-5 is being prepared for launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This will be the first test flight of a rocket that has been in development for more than a decade. Roscosmos plans several launch trials, but the launcher is not expected to enter service until 2028.
Although it is a new rocket, Soyuz-5, or Irtysh, is not a completely new concept. The vehicle is based on the Zenit-2 rocket, which was first designed in the 1980s by Yuzhnoye, a Ukrainian design bureau. Zenit rockets were manufactured in Ukraine, but used Russian RD-171 engines. For a long time, Zenit was one of the few examples of continued post-Soviet cooperation in the aerospace sector. That ended in 2022 with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia struck the Ukrainian facility that built Zenits in late 2023.
Essentially, Soyuz-5 is a version of Zenit that is bigger and assembled in Russia. The redesign means that Ukraine plays no role in the project. For Moscow, the change is strategic. The end of Zenit means Russian space industry is finally no longer dependent on Yuzhnoye. It also puts an end to the venerable Proton-M launcher, which is based on Zenit technology.
Soyuz-5: A Medium-Lift Rocket With Big Engines
Technically speaking, the Soyuz-5 should be classed as a medium-lift rocket. It is capable of delivering about 17 metric tons of payload to low-Earth orbit, according to Roscosmos. The additional performance comes from slightly bigger propellant tanks compared to Zenit.
At the core of the rocket is the RD-171MV engine. In appearance and performance, this is the newest iteration of an engine family that has been in production for decades.
The design dates to the Energia program of the 1980s, which also powered the Soviet Union’s one-and-only space shuttle, Buran. The RD-171MV is noteworthy for one reason: it is made without any Ukrainian components. Fueled by kerosene and liquid oxygen, it is a truly huge engine, making more than three times as much thrust as NASA’s Space Shuttle main engine. That makes the RD-171MV the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engine in use today.
This engine nevertheless flies on an expendable rocket. SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and many other new launch vehicles, are designed to be reusable. This difference also means that Soyuz-5 may struggle to carve out a market share for itself in the international launch business.
This is not the only reason to doubt the commercial success of Soyuz-5. The global launch industry has changed since Soyuz-5 was originally conceived, some 15 years ago. Rocket firms in Russia, the US, and increasingly China, have driven down launch costs, offering lower prices and greater flexibility. Soyuz-2 is still used for crewed missions and Angara rockets for large, heavy payloads, but neither has won a major share of the market internationally.
Will Soyuz-5 be different? Bakanov made that argument in his interview, saying that it could be cheaper than SpaceX’s Falcon 9. However, it is not clear if this will be true in practice.
A Long-Term Plan
With the budget strained by war costs and international sanctions, it has been difficult for Russian space industry to develop a completely new reusable rocket. Amur, or Soyuz-7, was supposed to fill that role. This rocket has a reusable first stage and methane-fueled RD-274 engines, which could be refueled in orbit. Such a configuration should be cheaper in the long run, putting it in direct competition with SpaceX.
But the project has seen a long series of delays. At this point, the first launch is not expected until 2030, if not later. That means Soyuz-5 will be a stopgap as Roscosmos works on its next-generation heavy rocket. A mission in December would still keep the Russian space program moving forward in the years before Amur finally becomes a reality.
Russia’s Soyuz-5 is a modern design, but one with deep roots in Soviet-era rocketry. The technology it uses to reach space is far from cutting edge, but it does keep the program moving forward. It also has significance as an independent Russian design. Soyuz-5 is a link between the launcher that Roscosmos uses today and whatever comes next, be it Amur or another successor.
