Russia\u2019s space program is seeking to repair its reputation for reliability after a failed launch as it confronts unprecedented foreign competition for getting into orbit.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Roscosmos agency will attempt to send its first crew into space on a Soyuz rocket since a booster failure on a similar model forced Russian Alexey Ovchinin and American Nick Hague to abandon their mission minutes after liftoff in October. They made the first emergency landing in the craft since 1975.<\/p>\n
NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier plans to attend the launch at Kazakhstan\u2019s Baikonur Cosmodrome to ferry Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, U.S. astronaut Anne McClain and Canadian David Saint-Jacques to the International Space Station. A successful mission won\u2019t dispel the storm clouds on the horizon for Russia\u2019s space program, however.<\/p>\n
Recent setbacks at Roscosmos, including a series of failed launches and accusations of misspending, have tarnished its Soviet legacy as the first manned space program. Adding to its woes, it now faces the prospect of reduced revenue as its seven-year monopoly on ferrying people to the space station comes to an end.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are obviously concerned\u201d about losing income from sending U.S. astronauts into orbit, Gerstenmaier said in an interview in Moscow before traveling to Baikonaur. \u201cThey share some of the same problems we do — there\u2019s a finite amount in the budget in our countries and space flight is part of the discretionary budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Billionaire Elon Musk\u2019s Space Explorations Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. have contracts to deliver astronauts to the ISS starting next year under NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew project. A raft of start-ups around the world also use cheaper rockets to put slimmed-down satellites into space, presenting a challenge to Roscosmos\u2019s lucrative launch business.<\/p>\n
Roscosmos\u2019s press service declined to comment on the potential loss of revenue from NASA. It has earned some $2.6 billion from the U.S. for carrying astronauts and equipment to the ISS since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in 2011.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s market share for rocket technology worldwide fell slightly in 2017, which Roscosmos blamed on sanctions, the weak ruble and increased competition, according to its annual report published on Friday. It singled out SpaceX for allegedly undercutting the market thanks to U.S. government assistance it received.<\/p>\n
Reliant on technology developed decades ago in the Soviet Union, Russia may find it\u2019s increasingly overtaken in the new space race. While NASA has a contract to send astronauts to the ISS with Roscosmos until February 2020, it will stop paying for seats on the Soyuz after that if the Commercial Crew program goes to plan, Gerstenmaier said.<\/p>\n
The windfall funding from the U.S. hasn\u2019t always been spent wisely. Alexei Kudrin, the head of the country\u2019s Audit Chamber, told Russia\u2019s lower house of parliament in June that he found 760 billion rubles ($11.4 billion) of financial violations on Roscosmos\u2019 books.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral billion have been spent, basically stolen, that we are currently investigating,\u201d Kudrin said in an interview aired Nov. 25 on state-run Rossiya 24 TV. \u201cRoscosmos is the champion in terms of the scale of such violations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kudrin\u2019s criticism related to a 2017 audit, Roscosmos told the Tass news service.<\/p>\n
The agency has faced a series of other problems. A critical defect was discovered on a launchpad of its newest cosmodrome, Vostochny, in Russia\u2019s Far East, RBC newspaper reported last week. Separately, a commission is still studying the cause of a mysterious hole found on a Russian module of the ISS. A spacewalk is planned for Dec. 11 to investigate the issue further, though a final report isn\u2019t expected until February, according to Gerstenmaier.<\/p>\n
Even so, the Soyuz remains the most-used launch vehicle in history and Roscosmos has had successful unmanned launches since the failure in October, which it blamed on a sensor that was damaged during assembly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see tremendous advantages in us working together and cooperating,\u201d Gerstenmaier said. If the two agencies also pursue \u201cdissimilar capabilities, or there\u2019s even a little competition in some areas, that\u2019s healthy too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s space program is seeking to repair its reputation for reliability after a failed launch as it confronts unprecedented foreign competition for getting into orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":255843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[8789,761,55960,11375],"class_list":["post-287896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-boeing","tag-nasa","tag-russian-space-programme","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287898,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287896\/revisions\/287898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}