The year looked bright for Russia’s space program as 2022 dawned. Seven Soyuz launches would complete deployment of OneWeb’s 648-satellite broadband constellation. In August, a Proton booster would launch the joint European-Russian ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet.
As the year ends, only a single OneWeb launch was conducted. The ExoMars rover will be stuck on the ground for at least six years with no further Russian participation in the mission. Western partners have cut off cooperation on just about every joint space project except for the International Space Station (ISS). A Soyuz spacecraft that carried two Russians and an American to the station sprung a coolant leak and might not be able to carry them safely home. And the former head of Roscosmos lies in a hospital with serious injuries.
With the exception of the coolant leak, the root cause of all of these setbacks was Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in February. The war ruptured relations with foreign governments while damaging Russia’s ability to sell launches and other space services to foreign customers.
A Good Start, but Then…
Russia’s 2022 launch campaign started out well enough when a Soyuz-2.1a rocket launched the Neitron No. 1 reconnaissance satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Feb. 5.
Five days later, a Russian Soyuz ST-B rocket launched 34 broadband satellites for London-based OneWeb from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The commercial launch was conducted by Arianespace under a joint program with Russia.
Thirteen Soyuz rockets had now launched 428 OneWeb satellites. Only six more launches, spaced out roughly a month apart, would be needed to fully deploy the company’s satellite constellation later in the year. The next batch of spacecraft was scheduled to fly on March 5 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The launch would never occur. Russia invaded Ukraine two weeks after the launch from French Guiana. The European Union, Great Britain, the United States and other Western nations protested the attack and imposed sanctions on Russia. Relations between Russia and the West plunged to their lowest level since the depths of the Cold War in the 1980’s.
The result was a strange scene at Baikonur. A Soyuz-2.1b rocket topped with 36 OneWeb satellites was rolled out to the launch pad. All OneWeb had to do is promise Russia that the satellites would never be used for military purposes. And the UK government had to divest its half ownership of the company.
Russia’s demands were widely seen as a poison pill designed to cancel the launch. OneWeb had marketed its services to various Western militaries and civilian government agencies that need reliable broadband services in remote locations such as the Arctic. The company was not willing to give up these potentially lucrative market segments.
The UK government had spent $500 million to help bail OneWeb out of bankruptcy in 2020; it wasn’t going to divest its interest in the company with the constellation partially deployed. OneWeb was a valuable investment for a nation that found itself no longer able to participate in the European Union’s satellite programs after exiting the union in January 2020.
OneWeb and the UK government predictably refused the demands. Roscosmos removed the Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the launch pad at Baikonur and took OneWeb’s satellites off the booster. The Russians said the company would not receive a refund of its money for the launch. The fate of the 36 satellites remains unclear.
OneWeb subsequently booked three launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 boosters and two launches on ISRO GSLV Mk III rockets. ISRO launched 36 OneWeb satellites in October. SpaceX put 40 of the broadband satellites into orbit in December. The remaining launches will be conducted in 2023.
Arianespace put cooperation with Russia on all commercial launches of Soyuz rockets on indefinitely hold in compliance with sanctions imposed by Europe.
A Mars Dream, Deferred
Although the Soviet Union conducted multiple successful missions to the moon and Venus, Mars was always a tough nut to crack. Not one of the Soviet missions was a complete success, and a pair of subsequent Russian missions failed to even leave Earth orbit.
The ExoMars mission looked much more promising. Russia would supply a Proton launch and a descent module for the ESA-built Rosalind Franklin rover. Russia was part of a Mars mission with a high probability of being a complete success.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine put an end to those hopes. ESA is now exploring cooperation with NASA on how to move forward with the mission. With favorable launch windows occurring only every two years, the launch is now expected no earlier than 2028. The rover will spend years in a very expensive, climate-controlled storage facility before it can explore the frozen surface of Mars.
Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin brushed off the loss of seven launches of Western payloads The boosters would be used to launch a whole variety of domestic payloads. He talked about using the descent module that would have delivered the Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars for a Russian mission to the Red Planet. Russian spacecraft would be launched on Russian rockets. A patriotic endeavor during war time.
It all sounded good. But, Western experts were more skeptical. Russia has been under sanctions since the country annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014. Those sanctions, which included Rogozin personally, made it more difficult for Russia to launch satellites by denying the industry access to crucial technologies. Further U.S. and European sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion in February have made the situation worse.
Rogozin Dials Up the Bombast
The Ukraine invasion seems to have infected the already bombastic Rogozin with a case of uber patriotism. The bombast went up to 11 as the Roscosmos boss threatened to pull Russia out of the space station program, letting pieces of the giant facility rain down on the United States and Europe as it made an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Rogozin threatened to strand NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the station instead of bringing him home on the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft. Elon Musk incurred his wrath for supplying Ukraine with Starlink broadband terminals.
Rogozin even threatened nations that opposed the invasion with nuclear annihilation. He was far the only Russian official to do so. Russia threatened nuclear war if members of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) became directly involved in fighting the war on the side of Ukraine.
Putin relieved Rogozin of his duties at Roscosmos on July 15. He was replaced by former Vice Prime Minister Yury Borisov, who immediately lowered the rhetoric and eased tensions with the ISS partners.
Rogozin’s Fateful Decision
Rogozin apparently hoped that his strong support for the war would be rewarded with a formal position overseeing Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine. It might have had the opposite effect. When no appointment had been made by November, Rogozin went to Ukraine as the self-described head of the “Tsar’s Wolves” volunteer inspection group. The group’s goal was to test and supply advanced weapons for use by the Russian military.
On Dec 21, Rogozin was seriously injured when an artillery struck a hotel in Russian-occupied Donetsk where he was celebrating his 59th birthday. Rogozin received a shrapnel wound above his right shoulder blade and a concussion, according to media reports.
TASS reported on Dec. 26 that Rogozin had underwent a complex operation to remove a fragment from the region of his cervical vertebra. The news service said the operation was successful and that Rogozin is recovering.
Space Cooperation with China
Russia decision to not participate in the U.S.-led Artemis lunar program has led it to seek closer ties with China. The largest joint project is an international research base on the moon. TASS reported:
Under the roadmap, the construction of the lunar station is expected to be completed by 2035. Two missions are planned in 2026-2030 to test the technologies of landing and cargo delivery and the transportation of lunar soil samples to Earth. The plans envisage developing infrastructure in orbit and on the Moon’s surface in 2031-2035, in particular, communications systems, electrical power, research and other equipment.
TASS further reported that Russian and China are cooperating on satellite navigation. Three facilities for Russia’s GLONASS navigation system will be built in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Changchun and Urumqi. In return, three facilities for China’s Beidou satellite constellation will be built in the Russian cities of Obninsk, Irkutsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
