Almaz Program

Almaz was the Soviet military orbital-station development effort, separate from the civilian Salyut program despite shared hardware heritage and public station names. Its crewed station design used a single large module visited by Soyuz spacecraft. The Almaz stations placed in orbit were publicly designated Salyut 2, Salyut 3, and Salyut 5; the first failed before occupation, while the later two hosted crews. Work on station structures and associated transport systems contributed to technologies later used in the wider Soviet and Russian station lineage.