TKS

Mission Profile

TKS (Transport Supply Ship) was a Soviet spacecraft designed to ferry crew and cargo to the Almaz military space stations, developed by Vladimir Chelomei's design bureau in parallel with Korolev's Soyuz program. The large spacecraft featured a reusable Functional Cargo Block propulsion module and an attached VA reentry capsule based on the earlier Raketoplan/Merkur design, capable of carrying three crew and several tonnes of cargo. TKS flew four uncrewed missions between 1977 and 1985 under Kosmos designations and was later repurposed as the propulsion and structural foundation for Mir's Kvant, Kristall, and Kvant-2 modules. The TKS functional cargo block lineage continued into the ISS era through the Zarya module that formed the first element of the International Space Station.