VA spacecraft

[9] While the VA spacecraft performed successful uncrewed test flights, both with and without a Functional Cargo Block, it never served in its intended role as a lunar vehicle due to cancellation of the soviet crewed lunar program, and it was never launched together with an Almaz space station.

First work on the VA spacecraft began on 13 May 1961 by Vladimir Chelomey's OKB-52 design bureau, in response to the US Apollo program.

The VA capsule would then remain unoccupied until the end of the mission, when it would serve as the reentry vehicle for the crew.

The Almaz APOS concept evolved into the Almaz-OPS stations of the Salyut programme, which were however never launched together with their crew, nor together with a VA capsule.

[8] For the flights of the subsequent crews of an Almaz space station, the VA spacecraft would have been mated with a Functional Cargo Block (FGB, 11F77) instead.

The TKS program would, after these test flights, evolve into the Functional Cargo Block based space station modules, and the VA capsules would no longer be of service in the Soviet Union.

Launch vehicle failure forty seconds into the flight on a suborbital test of two VA spacecraft.

Kosmos 1686 was on Sept. 27, 1985 the last flight of an TKS spacecraft – its target was the Salyut 7 space station.

The needed development of propulsion systems for the VA capsule was reportedly delegated to an unnamed European organization as early as 2009.