Number Of Space Launches In Russia Falls To The Level Of Early 1960s
8- 29.01.2025, 20:00
- 3,988
The Russian Federation has fallen far behind the United States and China in space.
Russia continues to lose ground in the global space market, where it was once a pioneer and leader. According to the results of 2024, Roscosmos carried out only 17 space launches — 2 less than in 2023, and 4 less than the 2022 figure. Russia lagged behind the United States, which launched 145 spacecraft into orbit, by more than 8 times, and behind China (68 launches) — by four times, according to data from the Payloadspace portal.
Roscosmos' plan for 40 space launches per year was fulfilled less than half, and the final annual result was practically the worst in the modern history of the country: fewer launches (16 per year) were carried out only during the pandemic and lockdowns of 2020-21.
According to historical statistics published by the ВВС, the number of space launches from Russian spaceports last year fell to the level of the first half of the 1960s — the era of Yuri Gagarin, when the USSR was the first to send a man into space.
A quarter of a century ago, Russia held a leading position in orbital launches: Roscosmos carried out more than 30 launches per year versus 28 for the United States, 12 for Europe and 5 for China (according to data for 2000). But since then, the United States has increased the number of launches by 5.2 times, and China — by almost 14 times. As a result, Russia has fallen to third place among space powers and is barely ahead of New Zealand, which carried out 13 launches last year.
Compared to the peak of Soviet cosmonautics in the late 1970s, when the USSR outpaced the United States in the number of launches by four times, their number has decreased almost 6 times.
Having found itself under sanctions due to the war with Ukraine, Roscosmos lost almost all foreign customers, and mass contract terminations brought it losses of 180 billion rubles, complained the deputy head of the state corporation Andrei Yelchaninov last year. In total, Roscosmos received more than 100 billion rubles in net losses for 2020-23, and last year it began selling off assets to fill its budget.
Funding for space programs from the federal budget will increase in 2025 — from 285 to 317 billion rubles, but their share in treasury expenses will decrease: if in the pre-war 2021 they spent 0.95% of the budget on these purposes, then in the current year it is already 0.77%, and by 2027 it is planned to reduce to 0.63%, the BBC notes. The most ambitious and expensive projects — a super-heavy rocket, needed, in particular, for long-distance flights into space, and the construction of a lunar base — have been effectively suspended without clear plans for implementation. And the largest post-war project — the first mission to the Moon in half a century — ended in fiasco.
In conditions of technological isolation, Russia is doomed to lag behind space leaders, says space expert Ivan Timofeev. There is no point in relying on China, which the Kremlin calls a strategic partner, in space, the expert believes: “China does not want to cooperate, it will do everything itself. And [Russia] has nothing to offer it.”
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