The Zarya spacecraft (Russian: Заря, lit.
'Dawn') was a secret Soviet project of the late 1980s aiming to design and build a large crewed vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL) reusable space capsule,[1] a much larger replacement for the Soyuz (spacecraft).
The project was developed during the years of 1985–1989 by Energia corporation until it was shelved in 1989, "on the eve of the Soviet Union's collapse" due to lack of funding.
The Zarya spacecraft would have differed from all previous spacecraft by having an array of a dozen rocket engines for making a soft landing upon return to Earth, without using a parachute.
[2] It would have had a normal crew size of one or two, and offered the possibility of carrying a maximum of eight to twelve if used in a lifeboat configuration.