Space deja vu: approved national project - a new attempt to boost domestic cosmonautics

I would like to emphasize right away that the full version of the national project, despite the fact that it was approved three days ago, has not been officially provided to the public. "There is a closed part that cannot be shared with journalists," they say at Roscosmos.

But even the data that can, in theory, be shared has not yet been fully formed for the public. When preparing the material, I had to collect information about the national project bit by bit, taking data about it from open sources, turning to experts.

As previously reported, during the discussion of this program at the government's strategic session on May 20, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin singled out as the main areas for our space industry (they were proposed by Roscosmos) the deployment of multi-satellite constellations, the acceleration of the construction of a fully domestic Russian Orbital Station (ROS) and a multiple reduction in the cost of launching a payload.

One of the main innovations of the national project was the transition of the space industry to a service model, which involves expanding the provision of space services to the mass consumer - communications, Internet, weather forecasting, high-precision navigation, as well as detailed photography of the Earth's surface. And one of the main roles in this will be played by private companies.

Roscosmos must provide them with the necessary resources for this, attracting an additional 30% (for all 10 years) of private funds for the development of the industry. This is almost 5 times more than was planned to be attracted following the results of the previous program.

Well, and where there is no possibility of commercialization, for example, in the area of ​​developing nuclear technologies in space or implementing long-distance interplanetary flights, here, of course, we cannot do without state participation.

Reference "MK".

The national project "Space" includes 8 subprojects. These are "Satellite communications and Earth observation", "Navigation and time", "Manned cosmonautics", "Sovereign competitive access to space", "Space science", "Development of space nuclear energy in Russia", "Production and technological system" and "Personnel for space".

Mass conveyor

Now let's take everything in order.

As I have already noted, modern transport networks promised to establish a mass production conveyor for spacecraft, without which the developing digital economy cannot exist, back in the last decade. In particular, the first batch of the Sfera group (it was the “successor” of the even earlier Ether project) was supposed to be launched into space as early as 2022.

By 2030, according to that project, more than 600 of its devices should be flying in orbit: Skifs for broadband Internet access, Marathon-IoT for the Internet of Things, Yamal geostationary communications satellites, and Express telecommunications satellites...

However, active deployment of Sfera was constantly postponed. By 2022, Roscosmos had released the first new demonstration satellite Skif-D, two Express, and that was the end of it.

Can the approximately 200 Russian satellites currently in orbit (including GLONASS navigation devices, the old Gonets communications group, and others) be considered the same Sfera? Apparently, yes.

And now, it turns out, it is smoothly flowing into a new cycle of its development. Together with it, as I understand, in 10 years we should have about 1200 satellites flying in orbit. The new 1118 spacecraft (SC) for remote sensing of the Earth (RSE), communications and retransmission, for which, according to Kommersant , a little more than 1 trillion rubles have been allocated, should help.

The new batch of satellites should consist of 900 devices for operation in low Earth orbit. They will be created by a private company working on the Rassvet group. It is assumed that these satellites, providing a transmission speed of up to 1 Gbps, will cover the entire country with the Internet. And if by 2031 they combine their capabilities with the already operating GLONASS group, this, according to Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Bakanov, will help improve positioning accuracy to tens of centimeters (!) from the current 7-8 meters.

That would be great. But it looks like we won't be able to catch up with the advanced countries even with such a group, because, as former head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov said last year, to do that we would have to increase the group to 2660 satellites within 10 years, that is, assemble 250 of them per year. With the new plans, it turns out that we will assemble an average of 90-100 satellites per year.

When will they give gas to space?

According to data from the government strategy session, if Roscosmos plans 46 launches of launch vehicles in 2025, then by 2030 it plans to increase this figure to 66, and by 2036 – to 113. This result is planned to be achieved with the help of the Soyuz-5 rocket under development and the Amur LNG complex with a medium-class launch vehicle on liquefied natural gas. Among other things, this rocket with a reusable first stage is expected to reduce launch costs by a factor of two (!); reconstruction and construction of ground infrastructure is being carried out for it at the Vostochny and Plesetsk cosmodromes.

Completion of testing of the methane engine for Amur LNG is scheduled for November 2025, and the first launch, according to Bakanov, will take place in approximately 2.5 years.

And a few more figures from the presentation at the strategy session. If Russia currently occupies 6.5% of the world launch services market, then by 2030 its share should grow to 14%, and by 2036 – to 28%.

How can one not remember that 20 years ago Russia was the leader in the number of space launches and held more than 40% of the world market for space services. But then everything went downhill.

The largest number of launches are related to the operation of the International Space Station (ISS). This is the delivery of astronauts and cargo to orbit to ensure their life support. The new national project, of course, includes manned Soyuz and cargo Progress. In addition, as Deputy Director General of Roscosmos Sergei Krikalev, who oversees manned spaceflight, told MK, the launch of a promising transport ship (PTS) is included in a separate line in the new program.

Let's hope that in the coming decade our long-awaited PTK ("Federation", "Eagle" or "Orlyonok" - as it was called under various previous heads of Roscosmos) will finally launch to the space station.

The moon and everything, everything, everything

One of the main tasks for the future use of the PTC will be the delivery of astronauts to the Moon in planned missions, which Dmitry Bakanov announced back in April of this year during a meeting of the heads of the BRICS space agencies. "Russia plans to launch a number of spacecraft for remote and contact studies of the Moon. These are the orbital vehicles Luna-26 and Luna-29, as well as landing vehicles to various areas on the surface of the Moon: Luna-27 No. 1 and No. 2, Luna-28, Luna-30," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.

According to him, the next step is planned to be the construction of a joint Russian-Chinese International Lunar Station on the Moon. Allegedly, 13 foreign partners have already joined this project. Within the framework of the initiative, it is planned to place a nuclear power plant on the Moon, and this is already an event from the project "Development of Space Nuclear Energy in Russia".

"From what we know, it is not very clear whether Roscosmos will continue to develop cooperation with the Kurchatov Institute, in addition to the project with a small power station for the Moon," says Andrey Ionin, a candidate of technical sciences and member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. "We would still like to see the development of our multi-year megawatt project "Zeus" for delivering cargo to the Moon, and in the more distant future, to Mars."

By the way, regarding the international lunar project with China, according to Ionin, we would like to understand whether we should then make our own super-heavy rocket, or whether we will use the Chinese Changzheng-9 being developed in the joint project, and we will not have to bother with our own?

Well, and, accordingly, another fork in the road, to which, in the opinion of our expert, there is no clear answer from Roscosmos yet: how, in the case of the development of an international project in deep space – lunar or Martian, should the project of a new Russian orbital station be transformed?

"After all, then the new station in near-Earth orbit may move from the main path of development of the national manned program to a secondary direction, where exclusively national-format tasks are solved: scientific, technological, defense, but in such a way as to fit into a "modest budget," says Andrey Ionin. "In the new conditions, we should return to discussing the appearance of the ROS, especially when with this choice we lay the main path of our manned cosmonautics and budget expenditures on it for decades. Here it is better to measure seven times - with experts in cosmonautics, technology, geopolitics, and only then cut once."

Forward to the unknown

Meanwhile, officials are already positioning ROS as a station whose operation, compared to the ISS, will save money due to the fact that it will be able to operate in an unmanned mode. That is, it will temporarily become a “drone platform,” as First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov recently put it.

It is also emphasized that the ROS will become one of the sites for fundamental scientific research, in particular, studying the impact of increased doses of radiation on the health of people planning to go to the Moon.

By the way, the “Space Science” direction, according to the national project, will receive 228.7 billion rubles by 2030 and 669.7 billion rubles by 2036.

"We are more or less satisfied with the space science funding program for the new ten-year period," comments Academician Lev Zeleny, Deputy Chairman of the RAS Council for Space. "It should be noted that this year, RAS President Gennady Yakovlevich Krasnikov has put a lot of effort into this, convincing members of the government that science, and space science in particular, is the basis of the country's main successes. Space is increasingly becoming a part of our lives, and it will be simply impossible to explore it without scientific research."

However, Lev Matveevich noted that the majority of this program is made up of projects that were not implemented in the last decade.

"From the previous program of 2016-2025, we only managed to implement Exo-Mars in 2016, launch the orbital astrophysical observatory Spektr-RG in 2019 and Luna-25 (this mission, unfortunately, did not end very successfully), - recalls the academician. - All other projects had to be postponed due to problems with funding, additional cuts, organizational and technical problems. Thus, from the previous program, we are preparing to launch into orbit in the new decade the space observatory in the ultraviolet range Spektr-UV, the X-ray observatory Spektr-RGN - a project that is a development of the currently operating Spektr-RG observatory. It is aimed at creating a pulsar navigation system. The world's first 10-meter cooled telescope in the terahertz range, Millimetron, is also being prepared for launch before 2036. It will search for water, complex organic compounds, and study the relic (background) radiation that uniformly fills the Universe."

According to Lev Zeleny, the national project also includes the Venera-D apparatus for a comprehensive study of the second planet of the Solar System, the launch of the Resonance spacecraft (it will study the Earth's magnetosphere), and Arka (to study the solar corona). In addition, the Space Science project includes the launch of two apparatuses with animals on board, Bion-M, which are needed for more detailed preparation of a human flight before the flight to the ROS station, and then into deep space.

"Now that the program has been approved, much depends on us, scientists, engineers, designers, and we are ready to implement our projects," the academician said at the end of the conversation. The main thing is that this national project is not unexpectedly cut again.