Since 1992 and for thirty years, Russia’s space activity has been based on the heritage of the Soviet space program and cooperation with the US, EU, Canada and Japan. Over the past three decades, the country has tried to modernize its space industrial base, carry out advanced civil and military space projects, and maintain its role among the major space powers, one of the three main pillars of its position as a great power, along with nuclear weapons and a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
At the same time, Russia’s space policy has been contradictory. On the one hand, the civilian program was aimed at maintaining long-term international space cooperation ties with the US and other partners through the International Space Station (ISS), individual space exploration missions, and joint ventures. . On the other, the military program was geared toward challenging US leadership both in outer space and in military and global affairs by maintaining a massive, multifunctional constellation of military satellites and developing counterspace capabilities.
However, the current aggression against Ukraine has destroyed the foundations for Russia’s space cooperation with the West and, in this sense, has been an important game changer. In previous years, between 2014 and 2021, Western sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbass and attempts to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election were painful, but only limited Russia’s access to space electronics and advanced industrial equipment. The embargo imposed after the Kremlin’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022 almost completely prevents access to Western products. That makes the development of the Russian space industrial base and space program almost impossible. For example, the cancellation of the association with the European Space Agency (ESA) means the exclusion of Russia from the exploration of Mars and other celestial bodies; it also slows down, if not stops, the Russian program to explore the Moon. In addition, Russia faces the challenge of maintaining and further developing its global navigation satellite system, GLONASS, as those satellites rely on European and US-made space electronics. And finally, Russia has lost its place in the global commercial space market.
The ISS remains the only space activity in which Russia, the US, Europe, Canada and Japan continue to act together. In addition, Roscosmos, the Russian state space company that also plays the role of space agency, is going to prolong the station as long as possible, at least until 2030, despite attempts to intimidate partners by agitating the possibility of a withdrawal from the project. . Before 2022, Moscow tried to negotiate a stake in NASA’s future manned Gateway station in lunar orbit (albeit somewhat harshly), but now there is no such option and the prospect of manned spaceflight from Russia beyond the ISS stage is entirely uncertain.
Since 2013, Russia’s space programs, both civil and military, have been governed and funded within the large state program Russian Space Activity. This program is divided into several federal programs and projects, such as the federal space program, the launch site development program, the GLONASS program, etc.; and also includes classified activity related to military satellite systems and ground infrastructure. After the state program for 2013-2020, there is now another one for 2021-2030. The amount of financing of Russian space activity is represented in table 1.
It is clear that after the annexation of Crimea and the first stage of the war against Ukraine in 2014-2015, it became much more difficult for the Russian authorities to develop space programs. Despite the significant increase in ruble-denominated space spending, that spending has been volatile if denominated in US dollars and has never reached the peak levels of 2013-2014. Given the continued dependence of the Russian space sector on imported technologies, industrial equipment and other components, and given the absence of a proper economic base, managing the complex space activity has become quite a problem.
For its part, the Roscosmos State Space Corporation has suffered from economic inefficiency since its reconfiguration in 2015 in place of the Federal Space Agency. Its income comes from what is dedicated to space spending and from what it receives from the export of space goods and services, from Russia’s spending on ballistic missiles and other military and civilian products (table 2).
Thus, during its eight years of operations the total net loss of the Roscosmos corporation has exceeded 95 billion rubles (about 1.4 billion dollars) and the situation promises to get even worse in the coming years. The key problem here is that Russia lost the contract with NASA for sending American, European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts to the ISS and two contracts with American companies, ULA and Northrop Grumman, for the supply of the RD-R rocket motors. 180 and RD-181, respectively. In 2006-2020, for example, Russia got $3.9 billion from NASA for seats on the Soyuz manned spacecraft. Russia also supplied 125 RD-180 engines in 1999-2020 and 22 RD-181 engines in 2015-2020 at an approximate total cost of more than $2 billion. Those contracts accounted for a significant part of the revenue of the Russian space sector and provided Russia with an additional source of funding for its space activity. Now, Russia completely lacks such a source.
This means that either the economic situation of Roscosmos will get even worse in the coming years, or the Government will be forced to increase its formal space spending with the sole aim of plugging the hole temporarily. The alternative here is a complete review of Russia’s space policy and priorities, but it is not clear that the Kremlin is capable of carrying out such a review.
Given the inevitable divorce between Russia and its ISS partners in 2030 (at least, barring crucial changes in Russia’s domestic and foreign policy), Moscow faces an uncertain outlook for its manned space program. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the program was only made possible through partnership within the ISS project and American financial support for that part of Russian space activity.
The problem is that Russia has failed to seize the opportunity properly. He has been trying for twenty years to develop a new manned spacecraft to replace the Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft. R&D programs in that field have been changing since the early 2000s, and now the current plan assumes that the new spacecraft will not be able to be operational before the 2030s; and such a ship will hardly allow Russia to go beyond low-Earth orbit. Considering that technical problems have already arisen with the manufacturing of Soyuz spacecraft, it is not at all clear that the appearance of a new Russian spacecraft is possible without cooperation with Europe and the US.
Moscow has also not been able to complete its ISS segment. In 2021, it deployed the new research module Nauka (science, in Russian) on it. However, the module itself is not new: the body was made in Soviet times, and the launch into orbit had been planned for many years. The only module that Russia is trying to develop without Soviet-era parts and components is the NEM, Research and Power Module. It was planned to be coupled to the Nauka module in 2015-2016, but the truth is that it does not exist. Since 2021, Russia has changed its vision. Now, the NEM is scheduled to become a core module of the new Russian national orbital station, scheduled for deployment in the 2030s. The problem here is that the NEM must be redesigned before it is manufactured: rather than being part of the Russian segment of the ISS, has to be operational without other modules in the first phase of deployment of the new orbital station.
And also money is a problem. The current annual operating cost of the Russian segment of the ISS is 35 billion rubles (about $500 million), and this is a reduced cost because, for example, the Russian crew now has two astronauts instead of three. from the years 2000-2010 and there is also a reduction in the number of research projects carried out. If all the Russian efforts were to succeed and the new orbital station and the new manned spacecraft were finally operational in the 2030s, their annual operating costs would be much higher. For all these reasons, the deficit in funding sources for space activity becomes a completely impossible problem to address.
Russia is trying to realize its ambitions in other dimensions of space activity, and the top priority there is the Moon. Russia’s lunar exploration program for the 2020s included three missions: Luna 25, as a moon landing technology demonstrator; Luna 26, as an orbital lunar probe; and Luna 27, as an advanced lunar landing module. All of them depended on the association with ESA; and, in the event that the launch of Luna 25 was possible in 2023, even without the retired European team (the original date was 2014), then Luna 27 would have to be redesigned. As for Luna 26, Russia bought earlier from 2022 to European companies all the necessary on-board equipment, but the probe was scheduled for 2024 and, among other things, it has to function as an orbital transmitter for the Luna 27 lander, previously scheduled for 2025. So the delay of Luna 26 seems inevitable due to the unavoidable delay of Luna 27.
Also canceled is ExoMars, the joint Russian-EU project that had been scheduled for 2022. That project included a Russian-made lander and a European-made rover. Despite official claims that Russia is capable of carrying out the mission itself and that it will equip its lander with all the necessary scientific tools, it still needs more money and advanced on-board equipment that it does not manufacture at all. . And, of course, there will be no Martian rover.
Furthermore, Russia’s problems with deep space explorations are not only concentrated in the technical, industrial and financial aspects. Today, it is impossible to carry out a sustainable and effective space science program if universities, other research institutions and the entire educational system are isolated from the ties of global cooperation and are subservient to political ideology and under the full control of security services, as in Russia.
Other immediate consequences of cutting back on space cooperation and expelling Russia from the commercial space market are related to launch vehicles. For one thing, Russia has four Proton-M heavy launchers and several Soyuz medium launchers left. At present, there are no payloads for them, and the question arises whether the Russian space industry will have to change its manufacturing plans.
On the other hand, the projects of new Russian launchers also suffer. The Angara family of launchers, developed since 1995 and not yet operational, lost its prospects as a commercial rocket. So the RD-191 engine manufacturing plan for Angara rockets is being reconsidered. Although several years ago an annual production of 40 engines was assumed from 2023 and the Government invested at least 13,000 million rubles (at least 200 million dollars) in the new manufacturing plant, in addition to the cost of the R&D program, actual contracts assume only 11 engines per year. Consequently, there is a problem of underutilization of industrial equipment. And the result is that the most advanced Russian rocket will be produced in very small numbers and only for government needs.
Russian ambitions to develop a methane rocket engine have also been indefinitely postponed, both for technological reasons and because of the drastic decline in demand for Russian-made launch vehicles. As a result, Russia’s role as one of the world’s leading launch providers, already damaged in the past decade by US private space companies and Indian and Chinese rockets, cannot be restored or maintained in the foreseeable future.
Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system was already having trouble developing further before the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Simply put, Russia is not capable of maintaining the global satellite navigation system that currently consists of 25 satellites. The current GLONASS structure needs at least 21 new satellites by 2030 in order to maintain the system and replace previous generation satellites, but current official plans call for no more than two navigation satellites to be put into orbit per year in the period 2023-2030.
There is an alternative plan: the development of a constellation of six navigation satellites in high orbits, like the regional navigation satellite systems of Japan and India, to ensure coverage of Russian territory. However, that plan has already been postponed until at least 2028. And it is still unclear how Russia will be able to produce the necessary number of satellites without access to European and American space electronics. That means that the future of GLONASS is today completely uncertain and it is not certain that Russia will be able to maintain its own navigation system.
As a result of all this, in the absence of significant changes in domestic and foreign policy, it will be difficult for Russia to avoid the collapse of its space program. And, in addition to crucially needed political changes, Russia needs a review and a manageable reduction of its space activity in many areas, including the military.
