Soyuz 2 was originally scheduled to be
launched one day after the launch of
Soyuz 1. The
cosmonauts on board would have been
Valeri Bykovsky,
Yevgeni Khrunov,
Aleksei Yeliseyev. It would dock and Khrunov and Yeliseyev would spacewalk to Soyuz 1 and returning to earth with
Vladimir Komarov.
It was decided that even after the troubles that Soyuz 1 was facing to launch the mission. The crew would dock and try to unfurl the solar panel. But due to heavy rain at Baikonur, the launch was aborted. It was discovered after the Soyuz 1 crash that Soyuz 2 had the same pressure sensor problem so it would have faced the same fate.
It was not until 18
months later that it got off the ground. This time it was
unmanned and launched on
25 October, 1968 into a 191 km by 229 km
orbit.
Soyuz 3 launched the next day and the two spacecraft mananged to rendezvous but not dock. The failed docking was blamed on manual control of the Soyuz 3 by Georgi Beregovoi, who repeatedly put the spacecraft in an orientation that nulled the automatic docking system. Beregovoi used nearly all of his orientation fuel in his first attempt to dock - of 80 kg allocated, only 8 to 10 kg was remaining.
Soyuz 2 then reentered and was recovered on 28 October, 1968.
This mission was notable as usually the spacecraft name was reserved for manned missions. Unmanned test flights of manned spacecraft tended would receive a Cosmos designation.
- http://www.astronautix.com/flights/soyuz2.htm
- http://www.terra.es/personal/heimdall/eng/soyuz2.htm
- http://www.spacefacts.de/mission/english/soyuz-2.htm