russia Is No Longer a Competitor in Space

International anti-russian sanctions and the unwillingness of leading global companies to cooperate with russians in the peaceful exploration of space have knocked russia out of the global race to colonize the Moon. Today, the United States and China are competing for supremacy. The Americans plan to land astronauts on the planet no earlier than mid-2027, while the Chinese are talking about their own taikonaut mission by 2030.

Huge expenditures from the russian budget on the war against Ukraine and a lack of technology and equipment have turned the russian space industry from a favorite into a burden on the country’s state budget. Due to sanctions, even international commercial customers (commercial launches), which provided up to 25% of financial income, have turned away from the russians. In reality, russia can now only cooperate with countries in Asia and Africa, but even there, Chinese competitors are successfully taking the last piece of the pie. Last year, roscosmos’ budget was approximately $4.15 billion, NASA’s (USA) was $25.4 billion, plus $34 billion for military space programs and $6.6 billion for space meteorological programs, and CNSA’s (China) budget was up to $20 billion.

With the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine, russia deprived itself of the opportunity to participate in many international space programs. Cooperation with the European Space Agency on the ExoMars mission to search for life on Mars has been suspended; Germany has left the joint project with the rf,  “Spektr-RG”, to scan the sky. roscosmos also “refused” to launch rockets from the spaceport in French Guiana. Sanctions made it impossible for NASA to participate in the joint project with russia, “Venera-D” – an automatic interplanetary station for studying Venus, launching of which was scheduled for 2029.

The current state of affairs in the russian space industry was best summed up by director of the russian rocket and space corporation “energia” igor maltsev: “We need to stop lying to ourselves and others that everything is fine”.