Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at Vostochny Cosmodrome in 2016. (Wikimedia)
To mark this year’s Cosmonautics Day on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight into space on April 12, 1961, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the newly built Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s far east.
The visit came during the seventh week of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has seen the European Space Agency, other western countries and many companies break ties with the Russian space program.
“Each one of us is experiencing extraordinary feelings today: it’s genuine pride for generations that have accomplished this epic technological breakthrough and simultaneously faith in the future, in our power and in our progressive development. Confidence in that we will definitely achieve the goals that we have set,” Putin told workers at Vostochny. “I am certain that this will be the case.”
Despite Putin’s optimism that day, he was speaking at a time when it was already becoming clear to most people that the Russian space program was becoming one of the casualties of his invasion of Ukraine.
Since the invasion began on February 24, the Russians have pulled out of the Soyuz rocket launch operation at Kourou, and the ESA quickly cancelled the planned launch from Russia later this year of the ExoMars mission, along with other joint projects with Russia. Communications satellites that the British-Indian company OneWeb had planned for Russian launch vehicles have been shifted to other suppliers.
The Ukrainian invasion has meant the end of exports of Russian engines for use on U.S. launch vehicles. Now the remaining arena of Russian-American cooperation is the International Space Station, where U.S., Russian and other astronauts continue to work together as they have for more than 20 years. Despite tweeted threats to do otherwise, the Russians brought U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei back to Earth on March 30 without incident from his U.S. record breaking 355 days on the ISS.
The widespread anger unleashed against Russia by its unprovoked attack on Ukraine has thrown the future of the ISS into question. Russia is committed to continue its work on the ISS until 2024, and the U.S. and other partners until 2030. NASA is already supporting firms planning to create successor space stations to follow the ISS.
Like Putin, many people remember the Soviet space spectaculars starting with Sputnik in 1957 through Gagarin and other flights that provoked the United States to send the first humans to the Moon in Apollo. The Soviet space program continued in the 1970s and 1980s with space stations and feats such as landings on Venus.
The decline of Russia’s space program began in earnest 30 years ago in the economic turbulence that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which was so bad that the U.S. government felt compelled to prop up the cash-strapped Russian space program to discourage Russian missile experts from moving to adversary nations such as Iran or North Korea.
In the 1990s Russian launch vehicles, previously forbidden, became a popular and inexpensive means of sending payloads into space. That ended in the last decade with the rise of SpaceX, when its low-cost Falcon 9 launch vehicles came to dominate low-cost space launch market.
In 2014 when Putin invaded and illegally annexed Crimea and backed up separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine, sanctions imposed at that time began to bite into Russia’s space business along with other parts of its economy. It also undermined parts of the former Soviet space industry that had been based in Ukraine.
Many people failed to take notice of the decline of Russia’s space industry at the time because it was supplying the only available rides for American and other space travellers to the ISS following the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011. Now that SpaceX is taking passengers to the station, that part of Russia’s business is also disappearing.
Since the latest invasion of Ukraine, much more serious sanctions are undermining Russia space service providers in world markets, along with other parts of the Russian economy. It is important to note that even before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Russia hardly had the economy of a superpower: Its gross domestic product was one-sixth that of the U.S.
The latest sanctions mean that foreign sales will not be available for the foreseeable future to prop up Russian space ventures. Growing social and military demands on the Russian government will limit its ability to prop up space ventures.
As well, many of the experts who kept Russian rockets and satellites flying are retiring or fleeing Russia along with other educated workers with marketable skills.
U.S. space ventures are on the rise thanks to its new space firms, and China is putting together an impressive list of achievements in space. Russia, which led the way into space with Sputnik, Vostok and other programs sixty years ago, is now on the brink of being consigned to the second rank of space faring nations, possibly in a partnership with China.
Russia’s fall from dominance in human spaceflight was well underway before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. The outcome of its war with Ukraine cannot be foreseen at the time of writing, but it is very likely to accelerate the decline of Russia’s place in space.
Vladimir Putin’s war appears to be dealing a final blow to Russia’s front rank position in space exploration, which it occupied for more than six decades. Along with the rise of America’s commercial space ventures, Russia’s backward step means that the future of spaceflight promises to be different from its past.
