Proton Train

Mission Profile

The Proton Train is the rail-based transport and erector system used to move the Proton rocket horizontally from the assembly building at Baikonur Cosmodrome to the launch pad and raise it to vertical for launch. Unlike NASA's crawler-transporter, which carries rockets vertically, the Soviet and Russian tradition is to transport rockets horizontally by rail and erect them at the pad, using a hydraulic erector arm. The Proton train has been in continuous operation since the Proton rocket's first launch in 1965, covering the approximately 1.5 km rail distance between the integration building and the launch pad at Baikonur in a journey lasting several hours. The system is used for all Proton variants and represents the mature Soviet launch infrastructure philosophy of simple, reliable rail-and-erector operations.