page_title: Kliper
section_title: Announcement of the program
hierarchical_section_title: Kliper / Development / Announcement of the program
caption_attribution_description: Backdropped by a blue and white Earth, this close-up view features the Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft approaching the International Space Station (ISS). Onboard the spacecraft are cosmonaut Sergei K. Krikalev, Expedition 11 commander representing Russia's Federal Space Agency; astronaut John L. Phillips, NASA ISS science officer and flight engineer; and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Roberto Vittori of Italy. The Soyuz linked to the Pirs Docking Compartment at 9:20 p.m. (CDT) on April 16, 2005 as the two spacecraft flew over eastern Asia. The docking followed Friday’s launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
context_page_description: Kliper was an early-2000s proposed partially-reusable crewed spacecraft concept by RSC Energia. Due to lack of funding from the ESA and RSA, the project was indefinitely postponed by 2006.
  Designed primarily to replace the Soyuz spacecraft, Kliper was proposed in two versions: as a pure lifting body design and as spaceplane with small wings. In either case, the craft would have been able to glide into the atmosphere at an angle that produces much less stress on the human occupants than the current Soyuz. Kliper was intended to be designed to be able to carry up to six people and to perform ferry services between Earth and the International Space Station.
context_section_description: In February 2004 Nikolai Moiseyev, the deputy director of Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA) told journalists that the Kliper project had been included in the Russian federal space program for 2005-15. At that point he announced that if the program is implemented successfully the first launch may even take place in five years' time. Kliper had been developed since 2000 and reportedly relied heavily on research studies as well as proposals for a small Russian lifting body spacecraft from the 1990s. Externally its design was comparable to the cancelled European minishuttle Hermes or the NASA study X-38. It was planned to be the successor to the veteran spacecraft Soyuz, which has been built in various modifications since 1961.
caption: Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft approaching the International Space Station - the Soyuz spacecraft would have been replaced by Kliper
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