New images detail damage caused by Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket factory
Click for original image.
New satellite images obtained by Business Insider now provide better visual evidence of the damage created by the Ukrainian missile attack on August 15, 2026 on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket factory, located in the city of Samara about 550 miles inside Russia.
The pictures to the right show the factory before and after. The top satellite picture was released the day of the attack. Building 106A is the Progress Rocket Space Centre in Samara, which is where the Soyuz-2 and the upgraded not-yet-operational Soyuz-5 rockets are manufactured. Building 106B is the facility where the rockets and payloads are integrated prior to shipment to the launch site. Early reports had suggested both buildings had been damaged, with 106A getting hit more.
The bottom picture, taken by a satellite in the imaging constellation of the American company Vantor and obtained by Business Insider, shows the actual damage, indicated by the arrows. Most of the impacts were in 106A and a building to the south. A wider shot posted at the link shows that building 106B experienced no direct hits.
Based on the damage, I suspect Russia will be able to recover from this attack relatively quickly, though the risk of future Ukrainian attacks to this facility remains, assuming Russia doesn’t move operations. The Ukraine considers Russia’s new Rassvet broadband constellation a military threat. It uses Soyuz-2 rockets to get into orbit, and the Ukrainian has been taking aggressive actions with missiles and drones to prevent their launch.
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Hitting each other’s drone facilities is understandable
This just makes me sad.
If you are a Russian space professional, both Putin and the Ukes are your enemy.
Poor devils
They should have a simple floor layout of these facilities. If they think they didn’t do enough to seriously cripple production they will send in a few more waves of drones.
Russia is pretty much reduced to simple radio frequency jammers and heavy machine guns for defense. guided missiles are getting scarce and moved to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Ukraine is using cell towers as radio beacons for navigating their drones, which is why Russian shuts off mobile service at times. Terrestrial radio and TV transmitters offer less precise triangulation opportunities, but when the Kremlin shuts them off we can know for sure that the s have really hit the fan.
They have several ways to navigate now and often use multiple types to complete a mission.
The latest is visual navigation by computer. Follow terrain markers and finally pictures of the target to make the final run. Compute expensive but un jammable.
They can use cell towers to navigate. Civilian radio transmitters. Really any known stationary transmission service. Insurgents could even plant transmitters on roof tops.
They have even helped Starlink to shrink the size of their sat links down to small enough to fit on drones. Something like 7 inches square. They can be very small because they are only needed to carry a small data stream. 1 meg per second on average.
Plus fiber optic for 50 mile ranges. FPG drones
They can also use re transmitter mother drones to carry and drop smaller fpg drones deep into Russia.
Impressive accuracy and damage. That is definitely not going to buff right out.
Ukraine is inflicting even more industrial and military damage on Russia than the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command did on Germany during WW2. They are able to do so by expending unmanned, inexpensive drones and missiles only – no crews. The robots can take loss rates on a given sortie that would have made even Hap Arnold and Bomber Harris blanch. Unlike Flying Forts, Liberators and Lancasters, none of the Ukrainian craft are expected to return whether they succeed or fail in their destructive goals.
Curious if failed drones self-destruct. You might take *something* out.
I have seen the Ukrainians drones.
I have seen the First Person Camera guided drones get knocked down and the operator wait until someone gets close then blows it up.
The Ukrainian drones have times in case they don’t explode on impact.
The Russian drones don’t seem to have timed detonation. I have seen videos of Ukrainians waiting till the batteries run down then go out and collect them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WzikLTQo8k
Thanks for covering this. Considering the possible effects across many of the world’s space programs, I’m astounded at how little attention this is getting. Nothing on Space News. Nothing on Spaceflight Now. Nothing on Aviation Week. Nothing on NASAspaceflight. There was a mention of it on the NSF forum a few days ago, but all posts related to this incident were deleted without explanation. Only you and Eric Berger are covering it. If I hadn’t seen video of the fireball from Ukrainian sources, I’d suspect you were making it up.
What a strange media environment we have. Thanks again for the coverage.
Interesting. I don’t frequent any of those sites except for an occasional peek at NSF. Editorial policy at many places must be like what Heinlein once said about military policy – “It’s like cancer. Nobody knows where it comes from, but you can’t ignore it and it won’t go away.” Damfino what makes certain outlets either so touchy or so oblivious about certain kinds of news.
A Heinlein reference is always welcome; and thanks for introducing me to a new term.
When ISS does it’s swan dive into Point Nemo, with neither station nor Soyuz left to visit it–folks won’t be on eggshells anymore and will speak more freely.
Look for it.
Russia is about to drop an ICBM stage
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63960.msg2818873#msg2818873