MoscowRussia’s crewed spacecraft has had 4 names since 2009.
It is meant to replace Soyuz for crews to orbit and to carry them to the Moon.
Parachute drop tests start this fall, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov says, with pad-abort tests later this year.
Four years ago, President Vladimir Putin spoke confidently of the spacecraft and a revived lunar program, and neither has materialised.
Russian officials still target a first crewed launch in 2028 or 2029, likely on an Angara A5M rocket.
How each outlet framed it
- Ars Technica leans critical
- catalogs repeated rebranding of Russia's crewed spacecraft over 20 years under different administrations (PPTS→PTK NP→Federatsiya→Orel); characterizes project as 'more of a Potemkin village than an effort encompassing real hardware'
Sources: Ars Technica