Main types of launch vehicles launched from Baikonur

A launch vehicle or a carrier rocket is a multi-stage rocket designed to carry payloads into outer space.

This is the short information about the types of main carrier rocket families launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome over the years:

• “Vostok” is the first manned spacecraft to be launched before 1964. It was on this spacecraft that Yuri Gagarin made his first space flight.
   
• “Voskhod” is the second generation of manned spacecraft. The first spacewalk was made from this spacecraft.
   
• “Proton” is a carrier rocket. Until 2018, it was the main launch vehicle for all Soviet and Russian Salyut-DOS and Almaz orbital stations, modules of Mir and ISS stations, and artificial satellites for various purposes.
   
• “Zenit” is a medium-lift launch vehicle. After the collapse of the USSR, missile assembly continued in Ukraine in close production and launch cooperation with Russia.
   
• “Soyuz” is the third generation of Soviet and Russian spacecraft. Later versions of this spacecraft, Soyuz-5, are still used in Roscosmos programs to deliver astronauts to the ISS.
   
• “Energia” is a powerful launch vehicle, which was used to launch reusable manned space vehicles “Buran” into orbit. Unlike its American counterpart the “Space Shuttle”, Energia could be used more than once.
   
• “Buran” is the Soviet analog of the American Shuttle. “Buran” made its first and only space flight in unmanned mode on November 15, 1988.

*The maximum mass of payload to be launched into low Earth orbit is given in parentheses