Russian Space Program: News & Discussion #3

Hole wrote:Now he will receive asylum in the west because his persecution is politically motivated.

Multipurpose lab module Nauka to be launched to ISS in autumn 2020 — source

Meteor-M satellite delivered to Vostochny spaceport

The satellite will be launched by the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket on July 5

BLAGOVESCHENSK, May 22. /TASS/. The Meteor-M No 2-2 spacecraft has been delivered to the Vostochny spaceport in Russia's Far East in preparation for the upcoming launch, the press service of the Center for operating ground-based space infrastructure facilities said on Wednesday.

"On May 20, the Meteor-M No 2-2 and all the accompanying equipment arrived to the Ignatievo airport in the Amur region. On My 21, the space cargo was transported from the airport to the Vostochny spaceport," the center said.

The Fregat upper stage was also delivered to the Vostochny spaceport earlier. Together with the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket, it will deliver Meteor-M to the orbit. The launch is expected to take place on July 5.

Meteor-M No 2-2 is a hydrometeorological satellite developed by the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Electromechanics (VNIIEM).

Russian space agency places orders for 8 Soyuz carrier rockets by 2021

The contract is worth almost $161 mln

MOSCOW, May 21. /TASS/. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos has placed orders with the Samara-based Progress Space Rocket Center for the manufacture of eight Soyuz-2.1a carrier rockets by 2021, according to information posted on the government’s procurement website on Tuesday.

The contract is worth almost 10.45 billion rubles ($161 million). Roscosmos will use eight Soyuz-2.1a carrier rockets for the launch of Progress-MS resupply ships and manned Soyuz MS spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).

The purchase of Soyuz carrier rockets will be financed from Russia’s federal budget. The government intends to allocate 6.15 billion rubles ($95 million) in 2019, 1.5 billion rubles ($23 million) in 2020 and 2.78 billion rubles ($43 million) in 2021 for the rockets’ manufacture.

"The main contractor [the Progress Space Rocket Center] is due to manufacture and deliver to the state customer three Soyuz-2.1a carrier rockets from the date of signing the state contract to November 25, 2020, five Soyuz-2.1a rockets from the date of signing the state contract to November 25, 2021," the procurement requirements say.

Russia currently launches Progress MS and Soyuz MS spacecraft to the orbital outpost using Soyuz-FG carrier rockets. After the operation of these rockets equipped with the Ukrainian control system is over, Russia plans to switch to launching domestically made Soyuz-2.1a rockets also from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

A source in Roscosmos earlier told TASS that Russia planned to launch the last Soyuz-FG carrier rocket equipped with the Ukrainian control system from the Baikonur spaceport on September 25 this year.

With millions of dollars missing and officials in prison or fleeing the country, Russia's space sector is at the heart of a staggering embezzlement scheme that has dampened ambitions of recovering its Soviet-era greatness.

For years, Moscow has tried to fix the industry that was a source of immense pride in the USSR. While it has bounced back from its post-Soviet collapse and once again become a major world player, the Russian space sector has recently suffered a series of humiliating failures.

And now, massive corruption scandals at state space agency Roscosmos have eclipsed its plans to launch new rockets and lunar stations.

"Billions (of rubles) are being stolen there, billions," Alexander Bastrykin, the powerful head of Russia's Investigative Committee—Russia's equivalent of the FBI—said in mid-May.

Investigations into corruption at Roscosmos have been ongoing "for around five years and there is no end in sight," he added.

In the latest controversy, a senior space official appears to have fled Russia during an audit of the research centre he headed.

Yury Yaskin, the director of the Research Institute of Space Instrumentation, left Russia for a European country in April where he announced his resignation, the Kommersant paper reported.

He feared the discovery of malpractice during an inspection of the institute, according to the newspaper's sources.

Roscosmos confirmed to AFP that Yaskin had resigned but did not clarify why. His Moscow institute is involved in developing the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS designed to compete with the American GPS system.

Stopping corruption 'primary goal'

Corruption has particularly affected Russia's two most important space projects of the decade: GLONASS and the construction of the country's showpiece cosmodrome Vostochny, built to relieve Moscow's dependence on Baikonur in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan.

Almost all major companies in the sector, including rocket builders Khrunichev and Progress, have been hit by financial scandals that have sometimes led to prison sentences for large-scale fraud.

Russia's Audit Chamber, a parliamentary body of financial control, said financial violations at Roscosmos in 2017 stood at 760 billion rubles (around $11.7 billion), accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total irregularities in the entire economy that year.

Roscosmos told AFP that "eradicating corruption" is one of its "primary goals", adding that it regularly cooperates with investigations by the authorities.

In mid-April, President Vladimir Putin stressed the need to "progressively resolve the obvious problems that slow down the development of the rocket-space sector."

"The time and financial frameworks to realise space projects are often unjustified," the Russian leader said.

More money, more corruption

Rebooting the space sector is a matter of prestige for the Kremlin. It symbolises its renewed pride and ability to be a major global power, especially in the context of increased tensions with the United States.

Almost destroyed in the 1990s, the sector stayed afloat thanks to foreign commercial contracts.

But independent space expert Vitaly Yegorov told AFP there were still "executives of a very high professional level" at that time and fewer accidents during launches.

The first module of the International Space Station (ISS), Zarya, was manufactured in Russia and launched in 1998 despite a major financial crisis at the time.

Paradoxically, the situation deteriorated in the early 2000s, when the Russian economy was growing. The influx of public funds fuelled fraud, and space research stopped advancing, experts say.

"Today, the space sector works like this: give us money and we will launch something—one day," Yegorov said.

Only the ISS continues to be "an unshakeable ivory tower", he said, since it plays a "political role" aimed at maintaining international cooperation.

Analysts say Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister known for his anti-Western statements, is struggling to deal with the industry's problems.

Russia's scientific community has criticised Rogozin, who is a journalism graduate, for his lack of knowledge of the space sector.

"He probably would have made an excellent spokesman for Roscosmos," joked Yegorov, adding: "Even Superman could not handle this avalanche of problems."

dino00 wrote:Rogozin has 2 degrees and a doctorate, not " a degree in journalism".
He entered Roscosmos in 24 May 2018, so he obviously is to blame about the corruption in 2017...
He was one of the 7 first persons to be sanctioned because of Crimea, I trust him.

"Lack of knowledge of the space sector" will he build the rockets? He is a manager, looks like is exactly that Roscosmos need.

"Russia's scientific community" could mean nothing or everything, it's like the International Community, a vague thing.

dino00 wrote:Rogozin has 2 degrees and a doctorate, not " a degree in journalism".
He entered Roscosmos in 24 May 2018, so he obviously is to blame about the corruption in 2017...

dino00 wrote:...He was one of the 7 first persons to be sanctioned because of Crimea, I trust him...

PapaDragon wrote:Also, why didn't this "trustworthy expert" ask for arrest warrant to be issued for that executive who skipped abroad?

dino00 wrote:Accounts Chamber: Unclassified checks on space revealed violations in 2018 at 50 billion rubles

https://1prime.ru/state_regulation/20190529/830021205.html

To the people who think Rogozin isn't doing anything just read. It still is a lot, he entered in May 24.

Proton-M puts Yamal-601 satellite in suborbital trajectory

Russian cargo spacecraft splashes down in Pacific after undocking from ISS