The Soyuz 7K-LOK, or simply LOK ( meaning "Lunar Orbital Craft") was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

crewed spacecraft This is a list of all crewed spacecraft types that have flown into space, including sub-orbital flights above 80 km, space stations that have been visited by at least one crew member, and spacecraft currently planned to operate with crews ...

designed to take humans from Earth to orbit the Moon, developed in parallel to the 7K-L1. The LOK would carry two cosmonauts, acting as a

mother ship A mother ship, mothership or mother-ship is a large vehicle that leads, serves, or carries other smaller vehicles. A mother ship may be a maritime ship, aircraft, or spacecraft. Examples include bomber aircraft, bombers converted to carry exp ...

for the LK lander which would land one crew member to the surface. It was part of the

N1-L3 The Soviet crewed lunar programs were a series of programs pursued by the Soviet Union to Moon landing, land humans on the Moon, Space Race, in competition with the United States Apollo program. The Soviet government publicly denied participat ...

programme which also included the LK lander and the N1 rocket.

Design

Like the 7K-OK model, the 7K-LOK was divided into three sections, an ellipsoid Orbital Module, the "headlight"-shaped Descent Module, and a cylindrical equipment module. Like the 7K-OK, the 7K-LOK was capable of physically docking with another spacecraft, but lacked the transfer tunnel used on the

Apollo (spacecraft) The Apollo spacecraft was composed of three parts designed to accomplish the American Apollo program's goal of landing astronauts on the Moon by the end of the 1960s and returning them safely to Earth. The expendable (single-use) spacecraft ...

, thus forcing the cosmonaut to make a

spacewalk Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft. In the absence of a breathable atmosphere of Earth, Earthlike atmosphere, the astronaut is completely reliant on a space suit for environme ...

from the 7K-LOK's orbital module to the LK Lander using the new Krechet space suit (the predecessor to the

Orlan space suit 270px, Cosmonaut Maksim Surayev next to two Orlan-MK models on the International Space Station image:Sharipov one.jpg, 270px, Cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov, next to the Orlan-M spacesuit The Orlan space suit () is a series of semi-rigid one-piece ...

s used today on the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

). Another change to the 7K-LOK was the elimination of the solar panels used on the 7K-OK, replacing them with

fuel cells A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most batteries in req ...

similar to those found on the Apollo CSM. Additionally, a "cupola" located on the Orbital Module, allowed the cosmonaut in the 7K-LOK to perform the docking procedure with the LK Lander after lunar liftoff. Only the Descent Module from the 7K-L1, with a thicker, reinforced heatshield, is used on the 7K-LOK and like the 7K-L1, is capable of doing a " skip reentry" so that the Soyuz could be recovered in the Soviet Union. The

information display systems "Information display systems" (IDS) is the general designation for the control panels and displays of Russian (and previous Soviet) spacecraft. For example, the original Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft used the "Sirius-7k" IDS. {, class="wikitable sortabl ...

(IDS) on the LOK were different from those of the Soyuz-7K. The Descent Module was equipped with the "Uran" control panel and the Orbital Module featured the "Orion" approach control panel.

Flights

Only three uncrewed 7K-LOKs were flown in the short lifespan of the failed Soviet lunar program. *One of them was a dummy 7K-LOK as a Soyuz 7K-L1E modification of a Soyuz 7K-L1 "Zond" spacecraft and was successfully test launched into

Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

on a

Proton rocket Proton (, formal designation: UR-500) is an expendable launch system used for both commercial and Russian government space launches. The first Proton rocket was launched in 1965. Modern versions of the launch system are still in use , making it ...

designated as Kosmos 382 (Soyuz 7K-L1E No.2) on December 2, 1970. *Two other unsuccessful launches of dummy 7K-LOK ( Soyuz 7K-L1E No.1) and operational ( Soyuz 7K-LOK No.1) with dummy LKs were fulfilled atop the

N-1 rocket The N1 (from , "Carrier Rocket"; Cyrillic: En (Cyrillic), Н1) was a super heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit. The N1 was the Soviet Union, Soviet counterpart to the US Saturn V and was intended to en ...

in its later flights on June 26, 1971 and November 23, 1972 intended for lunar flybys. Both spacecraft were pulled and saved by the

launch escape system A launch escape system (LES) or launch abort system (LAS) is a crew-safety system connected to a space capsule. It is used in the event of a critical emergency to quickly separate the capsule from its launch vehicle in case of an emergency requiri ...

when those boosters failed. The two aborted flights later proved that the launch-escape system worked when a similar problem on a

Soyuz-U Soyuz-U ( GRAU index: 11A511U) was a Soviet and later Russian expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed by the TsSKB design bureau and constructed at the Progress factory in Samara, Russia. The ''U'' designation stands for ''unified' ...

forced the

Soyuz T-10a Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L, sometimes known as Soyuz T-10a or Soyuz T-10-1, was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the Soyuz T-9 crew. However, it never finished its launch countdown; th ...

to be jettisoned with its cosmonaut crew in 1983 before the booster exploded on the launchpad, destroying it. On two early flights of the N-1, both of them failures, another Soyuz 7K-L1S "Zond-M" modification of the 7K-L1 spacecraft instead of the 7K-LOK or 7K-L1E were used without the dummy LK, and they, along with the booster, were destroyed. *Subsequently, a complete L3 lunar expedition complex with an operational 7K-LOK and LK, LOK 2, for an uncrewed lunar flyby and landing mission (in preparation of a future crewed flight) was prepared for the fifth launch of a modified N1 rocket in August 1974. The

program was cancelled in May 1974 and the Soviets decided to concentrate on the development of space stations, achieving several firsts in the process.

References

External links

LOK spacecraft article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soyuz 7k-LOK Crewed spacecraft Soyuz program Cancelled Soviet spacecraft Soviet lunar program