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Do you participate in spacecraft development? Do you know the status of a particular mission? Please help us to keep this page up to date! (We respect confidentiality of all sources.) Contact: Anatoly Zak

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Space activities in 2023

On January 30, the head of RKTs Progress Dmitry Baranov was quoted by the official TASS news agency as promising "around 20" launches of Soyuz rockets during 2023. With two or three Proton launches and couple of Angara missions, Russia could make more than two dozen orbital launch attempts during the year.

For missions in 2022 click here

The world's orbital launch attempts in 2023 (as of March 26, 2023 ):

The 2023 space launch score card (as of March 26, 2023 ):

*Failed launch

Planned Russian space launches in 2023:

May 24: A Soyuz-2 rocket to launch the Progress MS-23 cargo ship from Baikonur to the International Space Station, ISS. As of 2014, two Progress missions were penciled for April 16, and July 1, 2023. By 2022, only one cargo flight was planned in the Summer of 2023.

Progress MS-23 was shipped from Korolev to Baikonur on June 29, 2022. It reached the space center on July 4, 2022.

On Feb. 1, 2023, Roskosmos announced that two Soyuz-2-1a rockets for launching Progress MS-23 and Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft had been shipped from the manufacturing site at RKTs Progress in Samara to the Baikonur launch site.

The launch campaign for the Progress MS-23 mission officially started in the processing building at Site 254 on March 17 with the inspection of the spacecraft and preparation for its electrical check, Roskosmos said.

Postponed from May 25, 20:34 Moscow Time: A Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat rocket to launch a Meteor-M No. 2-3 meteorological satellite and a cluster of secondary payloads from Pad 1S in Vostochny. (As of March 10, 2023, the launch was postponed from May 25, 2023, at 20:34 Moscow Time)

June 27: A Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat rocket to launch the Kondor-FKA No. 1 radar satellite from Pad 1S in Vostochny. The Fregat upper stage and the payload fairing for the mission were delivered to Vostochny around March 14, 2023. On March 22, Roskosmos announced that the Kondor-FKA spacecraft was packed and ready for shipment to the launch site within days.

August 23: A Soyuz-2 rocket to launch Progress MS-24 from Baikonur to the International Space Station, ISS.

September 15: A Soyuz-2-1a rocket to launch the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft (No. 755) with a crew of three from Baikonur to the International Space Station, ISS. One of its three crew members was expected to be a guest cosmonaut from Belarus, who would return to Earth with the crew of Soyuz MS-23 after a short visit to the station. His return seat aboard Soyuz MS-24 in early 2024 would be occupied by one member of the original Soyuz MS-23 crew. According to Roskosmos, on June 14, 2022, National Academy of Belarus submitted 29 candidates to Roskosmos for the guest-cosmonaut selection after screening more than 100 applicants. Two finalists expected to be females serving as a primary candidate and a backup. They were scheduled to be selected early in 2023.

By January 2023, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, originally slated to launch aboard Soyuz MS-23, were re-assigned to the Soyuz MS-24 mission, due to the need to use their spacecraft as a replacement vehicle for Soyuz MS-22, which was damaged by a coolant leak in December 2022. In turn, the flight of a guest cosmonaut from Belarus was shifted to the follow-on Soyuz mission in 2024.

On Feb. 1, 2023, Roskosmos announced that two Soyuz-2-1a rockets for launching Progress MS-23 and Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft had been shipped from the manufacturing site at RKTs Progress in Samara to the Baikonur launch site.

In early March 2023, plans surfaced to advance the launch of Soyuz MS-24 from September 15 to June 7, 2023, probably in order to provide an earlier landing of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, which could be affected by an issue that caused coolant leaks aboard Soyuz MS-22 and Progress MS-21 transport ships.

On March 11, Sergei Krikalev, Head of Piloted Space Flight at Roskosmos, confirmed to the Interfax news agency, that an earlier launch for the Soyuz MS-24 had been under consideration among several other scenarios. However, the meeting of the State Commission on March 24, 2023, kept the schedule as is for the time being, possibly because it would be impossible to sustain future crew rotations aboard the ISS with the newly proposed schedule.

The first phase of preparation for the Soyuz MS-24 mission started in the processing building at Site 254 on March 17, 2023, with a visual inspection, initial measurements and the connection of the ship to test equipment, RKK Energia said.

December 1: A Soyuz rocket to launch Progress MS-25 from Baikonur toward the International Space Station, ISS. The spacecraft was shipped from its assembly plant in Korolev to Baikonur on Jan. 20, 2023.

For missions in 2024 click here

This page is compiled by Anatoly Zak; Last update: March 26, 2023

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Luna-Resurs lander. Click to enlarge. Copyright © 2013 Anatoly Zak

Angara-5 during the first stage ascent. Click to enlarge. Copyright © 2014 Anatoly Zak

At the end of 2015, the Euclid space observatory was promised to launch in December 2020 on a Soyuz rocket. By the middle of 2020, the launch was promised in 2022. By October 2022, ESA arranged the launch of the spacecraft on a Falcon-9 rocket, replacing Soyuz after Russia's escalation of its war against Ukraine. Credit: ESA