- calendar_today August 20, 2025
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Russia is expected to send its next-generation rocket, Soyuz-5, to space before the end of the year. Dmitry Bakanov, director general of Roscosmos, announced the timeline in an interview with TASS, a state media outlet, on Friday.
“Yes, we are planning for December,” Bakanov told TASS, before adding that the preparations for the inaugural liftoff were “close to being completed.” Roscosmos is working on the flight from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. Should everything go to plan, December will see the maiden voyage of a rocket that has been in development for over 10 years. Roscosmos plans multiple test launches, but doesn’t anticipate a transition to routine service until 2028.
Soyuz-5 (nicknamed Irtysh) is a good example of how the new booster is not the product of a fresh start. Instead, it repurposes many of the key elements of Zenit-2, a rocket that Russia purchased from the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Ukraine and first flew in the 1980s. The Zenit was assembled in Ukraine, but used engines (RD-171s) supplied by Russia. The launch vehicle became a rarity in post-Soviet aerospace—a working example of Russian-Ukrainian cooperation. The relationship did not last long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia attacked the Ukrainian plant that used to assemble Zenits in late 2023.
Soyuz-5 is a larger version of the Zenit that is built at home. The redesign has allowed Moscow to wean itself off the Zenit, with all major components now being produced in Russia. This is a cause for celebration in the Russian space industry: An end to a dependence that had been going on for over 30 years. The move also makes it possible to phase out Proton-M, a launcher that has been in service since the 1960s.
The Technical Details
Technically speaking, Soyuz-5 is a medium-lift vehicle. It can deliver about 17 metric tons to low-Earth orbit (LEO). This is made possible by using slightly larger propellant tanks than the Zenit. The core of Soyuz-5 is the RD-171MV engine, a new addition to a historic line of rocket motors.
This engine has its roots in the Energia program of the 1980s. Energia powered the Soviet Union’s ill-fated space shuttle, Buran. The newest member of the RD-171 family is a fitting update for those earlier days. Most of its features are familiar, but there is one key difference: The engine has no Ukrainian parts. The RD-171MV, which runs on kerosene and liquid oxygen, generates over three times as much thrust as the Space Shuttle main engine. It is the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engine currently in operation.
In other words, Soyuz-5 is an expendable rocket. It is very much the past, as its older siblings Soyuz-2 and Zenit were. By contrast, the latest entrants to the launch market—most notably SpaceX’s Falcon 9—are purpose-built with reusability in mind. This alone makes it unlikely that Soyuz-5 will ever win a significant share of the international launch market.
This doesn’t mean that the vehicle isn’t important to Roscosmos. The space agency has limited funding for its programs because of war spending and international sanctions. It has proven challenging to develop a completely new, reusable rocket under these circumstances. The Amur project, also known as Soyuz-7, was meant to be the answer. It is a much more advanced rocket with a reusable first stage and methane-fueled engines. Theoretically, Amur could challenge SpaceX on cost, making Russian launch services a more competitive option. The booster has suffered repeated delays, however, and its debut is now not expected before 2030 at the earliest.
Soyuz-5 is a bridge between the past and an as-yet-undetermined future. For Russia, that could be a shortcoming, as the commercial launch industry has changed beyond recognition in the last decade. The rise of SpaceX and Chinese providers has drastically reshaped the market, making newer services cheaper and more flexible. Russia’s Soyuz-2 rockets are used for crewed launches and the Angara family of rockets for heavier payloads, but neither has had great success internationally. Whether a new variant like Soyuz-5 is enough to change that remains to be seen.
Still, it is a sign of the effort that Roscosmos has put into Soyuz-5 that it has managed to get so close to launch under difficult circumstances. December’s flight would be a small but meaningful victory for a space agency that has seen significant sanctions on its rocket and satellite programs, along with big cuts to its budget. A successful maiden voyage would show that Russia can still get new hardware on the launchpad.
Soyuz-5 is unlikely to set any new technical standards. But for Russia, it has political and industrial significance. The rocket is a step toward technological independence from former Soviet republics and a stopgap to bridge the gap to an as-yet-unknown future. This future might come with Amur, or it could be represented by another, still-concept design.
