Soyuz-U
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The Soyuz-U (11A511U) rocket in the Soviet rocket designation series was a version of the Soyuz launch vehicle first introduced in 1973.
The Soyuz-U vehicle replaced earlier Soyuz launch vehicle variants and the Voskhod rocket, all of which were closely related vehicles derived from the Soviet R-7 ICBM. The Soyuz-U was a unified, single vehicle capable of launching manned and unmanned payloads.
The first Soyuz-U flew on 1973-05-18, and the last flew on 2004-12-23. A total of 708 Soyuz-U launch vehicles were launched, with 19 launch failures and 689 successes.
There was one variant of Soyuz-U, the Soyuz-U2 or 11A511U2 launcher. This used the same hardware as the basic Soyuz-U, but used a high energy, synthetic kerosene Syntin instead of normal kerosene as the first stage fuel. This variant last flew in 1996, after production of Syntin ended.
