The Soyuz TMA-18M was a manned spacecraft which was launched on September 2, 2015 to transport crew to the International Space Station. The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft docked with the ISS on September 4, 2015 and undocked on March 18, 2016. The Soyuz TMA-18M was manned by commander Sergey Volkov, flight engineer Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov.
Soyuz TMA-18M is part of the Soyuz program which is a series of Soviet/Russian expendable launch vehicles designed for the human spaceflight program. The Soyuz craft are launched on top of the soyuz rocket from sites in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan and Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia.
Soyuz rockets were first used in 1966 for satellite launches but later modified for human spaceflight starting in 1971 with uncrewed test flights followed by piloted missions later that year. Since then there have been over 1,700 launches of various iterations of the soyuz vehicle with a 98% success rate. As of April 2019 there have been 244 successful manned launches of soyuz vehicles from 1986 onwards out of 248 attempts including two partial failures (one due to a booster separation issue during ascent and another due to an incorrect attitude resulting in excessive G-forces). There have also been three aborted missions prior to launch (two caused by problems with filling the propellant tanks and one due to strong upper level winds) as well as four failed missions during descent (due to parachute or landing rocket malfunction).
The most recent failure occurred on October 11, 2018 when a booster rocket carrying two astronauts – American Nick Hague and Russian Alexey Ovchinin – failed just minutes after liftoff from Baikonur Cosmodrome resulting in an emergency landing. Both astronauts were unharmed but the incident resulted in all future soyuz launches being suspended until further notice while an investigation took place. Launches resumed on December 3, 2018 with the successful launch of Soyuz MS-11 carrying Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Aleksey Prokopyev to the ISS.
The Soyuz TMA series is currently being replaced by the more advanced Soyuz MS series which features improved avionics as well as other technical enhancements however both types of vehicle will be capable of flying side by side until at least 2025 when all remaining TMA contracts are set to expire.