Editing Soyuz (rocket family) (section)

=== Recent incidents ===
A long streak of successful Soyuz launches was broken on 15 October 2002 when the uncrewed [[Soyuz-U]] launch of the Photon-M satellite from [[Plesetsk]] fell back near the launch pad and exploded 29 seconds after lift-off. One person from the ground crew was killed and eight were injured.

Another failure occurred on 21 June 2005, during a [[Molniya (satellite)|Molniya]] [[military]] [[communications satellite]] launch from the Plesetsk launch site, which used a four-stage version of the rocket called [[Molniya-M]]. The flight ended six minutes after the launch because of a failure of the third stage engine or an unfulfilled order to separate the second and third stages. The rocket's second and third stages, which are identical to the Soyuz, and its payload (a Molniya-3K satellite) crashed in the [[Uvatsky District|Uvatsky]] region of [[Tyumen]] ([[Siberia]]).{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

On 24 August 2011, an uncrewed Soyuz-U carrying cargo to the International Space Station crashed, failing to reach orbit. On December 23, 2011, a Soyuz-2.1b launching a [[Meridian 5]] military communications satellite failed in the 7th minute of launch because of an anomaly in the third stage.<ref>{{cite web |author=Amos |first=Jonathan |date=23 December 2011 |title=Another Soyuz rocket launch fails |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16317099 |access-date=29 March 2013 |publisher=BBC News}}</ref>

On 11 October 2018, the [[Soyuz MS-10]] mission to the [[International Space Station]] failed to reach orbit after an issue with the main booster. The [[launch escape system]] was used to pull the Soyuz spacecraft away from the malfunctioning rocket. The two crew, [[Aleksey Ovchinin]] and [[Nick Hague]], followed a ballistic trajectory and landed safely over 400&nbsp;km downrange from the [[Baikonur Cosmodrome]].