Tag: Russia

China and Russia successfully launch satellites

8:34 am

Both China and Russia today successfully places satellites into orbit.

China used its Long March 4C rocket to place an Earth observation radar satellite into orbit. Russia in turn used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a military surveillance satellite. As both launched from interior spaceports, both dumped first stages and boosters on their respective countries.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

12 SpaceX
9 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 19 to 9 in the national rankings.

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Ukrainian rocket development for Nova Scotia spaceport unhindered by war

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: The development of a Ukrainian rocket dubbed Cyclone 4M for of any satellite customers who choose to launch from a planned Nova Scotia spaceport has not been delayed by the Ukraine war.

“Everything is stable with respect to our team in Ukraine,” said Steve Matier, president of Maritime Launch Services. “The facility there is fine, the staff is fine and at work. . . . We’re continuing to finance their development of the launch vehicle.”

The Cyclone 4M rocket Maritime Launch Services plans to use is designed and built by Ukrainian state corporations Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash in Dnipro. Known as Space City, Dnipro is located in central Ukraine. The city of about a million people was shelled in mid-March by Russian forces and the airport runways and terminal were hit by missile strikes, according to Ukrainian government statements.

This story illustrates the strong possibility that the recent success the Ukraine has had on the battlefield has served to prevented any serious long term damage to its aerospace industry and its partners in the west. Those partnerships if anything look stronger, with the work in the Ukraine apparently able to continue as planned, with only slight delays.

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Rogozin proposes Russia launch modules to China’s space station

9:54 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, yesterday proposed in an interview on China’s state-run press that Russia is eager to discuss the possibility of attaching its future space station modules to China’s Tiangong space station.

“As for the Chinese space station, we can discuss construction of some joint modules as well. In order to be friends in space, friendship must first be established back on Earth, and Russia and China are friends on Earth,” Rogozin said. He opined that Russia and China “can be together” in human spaceflights as well.

Whether China will agree is in some ways besides the point. The real question is whether Russia has the capability to do this. Though China and Russia already have a joint agreement to develop a permanent base on the Moon, China is carrying most of the load. Moreover, Russia’s new modules for ISS are decades behind schedule. Whether they will now even be launched to ISS is questionable. Adding these Russian modules to China’s space station will require some major engineering discussions, as neither Tiangong nor the modules were designed for such a thing.

I suspect the two countries will work out an agreement that they will announce with great fanfare. I also expect China will insist that at no time will it be dependent on Russian technology, so that if Russia is delayed or can’t get it done, China will not be hampered in any way. This is essentially their deal for building the lunar base.

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Rogozin tweets: ISS cooperation to end

5:59 pm

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s aerospace corporation, Roscosmos, today confirmed in a series of tweets that Russia intends to end its partnership at ISS due to the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of the Ukraine.

Rogozin however did not provide any details other than saying:

Specific proposals of Roscosmos on the timing of the completion of cooperation within the framework of the ISS with the space agencies of the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Japan will be reported to the leadership of our country in the near future.

I predict the following:

1. No more barter flights, exchanging Russian and international astronauts on each other’s capsules.
2. No more mutual research on the station.
3. Russia leaves as of ’24, after it adds its remaining modules.

Once those extra modules are launched and installed on the Russian half of ISS, Roscosmos will be more capable of separating its half from ISS and fly it independently. There will be engineering challenges, but this plan will give them two years to address them. It will also give everyone else the time necessary to plan for that separation.

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The Ukraine War: Increasing Ukrainian gains in the past week

4:42 pm

The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of March 31, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 31, 2022. Click for full map.

Another week has passed in the Ukraine war, and with it we begin to see increasing evidence that not only has the Russian invasion stalled, but that the Ukraine is beginning to push back with more and more effectiveness.

The two maps to the right are from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and have been simplified, annotated, and reduced to post here. The top was from ISW’s March 24, 2022 report, the bottom from its report today. The dark red areas are regions either controlled by Russia or areas of confirmed Russian advance. The light red indicates areas the Russians claim to control without confirmation. The blue areas mark areas retaken by the Ukraine in battle. The circles indicate areas of recent heavy fighting.

The green arrows I have added to both maps indicate areas where there have been changes since the week prior. Like last week, the arrows point almost entirely to areas where Russian control has ebbed, either because the Russians have chosen to retreat, or because Ukrainian forces have pushed them out. The summary from ISW is succinct:
» Read more

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Soyuz capsule returns three astronauts safely, completing Mark Vande Hei’s 355 day mission

8:28 am

A Russian Soyuz capsule successfully returned three astronauts back to Earth today, thus completing Mark Vande Hei’s 355 day mission, the longest so far achieved by an American astronaut.

Vande Hei’s record is the fifth longest overall, behind four other Russians on Mir. Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov were the first to complete a year-long flight in 1987-1988. Sergei Avdeyev’s flight of 381 days on Mir in 1998-1999 is the second longest. Valery Polyakov holds the record for the longest flight, 437 days in 1994-1995.

Now that Vande Hei is safely back on Earth, expect Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, to make some announcement in the next day or so further limiting cooperation at ISS. It is my expectation he will end the discussions between Roscosmos and NASA to exchange one-for-one flights on each other’s capsules. While the partnership to maintain and occupy ISS will continue, Rogozin will likely end any cooperation otherwise.

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Japanese satellite startup Synspective raises $100 million

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese satellite startup Synspective announced today that it has successfully raised $100 million in private investment capital.

The latest funding was led by Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), Nomura SPARX Investment, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), and Pavilion Capital Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) among others, as well as bank loans, and it is supposed to be ranked within the top ten largest startups in Japan. This puts our total funding value at US $200M (22.8 billion yen) since our founding.

The company plans to launch a constellation of 30 radar satellites by 2026, designed to do Earth resource observations.

Synspective had hoped to launch its first demonstration satellite in ’23 on a Soyuz rocket. That launch is presently threatened by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, though it is not clear if it has been cancelled.

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Ukraine War energizes commercial orbital remote sensing industry

10:31 am

Capitalism in space: It appears that the Ukraine War has had a positive effect on the emerging commercial remote-sensing satellite industry.

This industry is made up of a number of new private companies launching satellites to take high resolution images across a range of wavelengths, as well as do surveillance of communications. These companies have in the past decade slowly taken over this market from government satellites, which were becoming too expensive and launching too slowly to meet the military’s needs.

The war is illustrating their success, and firming up their businesses as other customers, such as news organizations, utilize their capabilities.

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Arianespace and SpaceX adjust to the new commercial launch market, without Russia

9:56 am

Link here. The article is mostly about how both companies need to adjust their launch schedules, with Arianespace scrambling to find rockets for its customers who had been scheduled to launch on Russian Soyuz-2 rockets and SpaceX describing how it will readjust its schedule with the addition of the OneWeb satellite launches.

The article had two quotes of interest. First, this fact about Arianespace’s new Vega-C rocket:

The Vega C uses an upper stage engine provided by Ukraine’s Yuzhmash, and supplies of that engine are in question because of the ongoing invasion. ESA officials said March 17 that they have three of those engines, enough to handle the anticipated Vega C missions this year.

ESA is supporting work on a new upper stage engine, M10, for a version of the Vega called Vega E that is slated to make its first launch around 2025. [Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace] said there was “no need” to accelerate work on Vega E, though, citing the Ukrainian engines in storage.

Thus, Vega-C is in the same boat as Northrop Grumman’s Antares, which also relies on Ukrainian rocket engines. When you also add the difficulty that both Blue Origin and ULA are having getting new rockets off the ground because of the delays in the BE-4 engine, it appears that in general there is presently a strong need across the entire rocket industry for rocket engines that is not being fulfilled by the engine builders available. This fact puts the new rocket engine company Ursa Major in a very strong position, should it begin to build bigger engines to serve this need. It also suggests there is an opportunity here for other engine builders, such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, if they have the wherewithal to grab it.

The second quote from the article of interest was from a SpaceX official, describing how the company is dealing with the sudden requirement to launch 216 OneWeb satellites:

Tom Ochinero, vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX, said at the conference that the company’s vertical integration and large fleet of reusable boosters offer the company flexibility to accommodate customers like OneWeb. “We can react very quickly because we’re just managing a fleet,” he said. [emphasis mine]

I just love the significance of the highlighted quote. Unlike all past rocket companies, SpaceX doesn’t have to build more rockets to add new customers, which makes adding new customers difficult and expensive. It simply can readjust how it uses the rockets in its fleet to get those new customers in orbit. And the new business will likely pay for SpaceX to expand that fleet so that it can launch more satellites even quicker.

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The Ukraine War: Another week, little change

5:16 pm

The Ukraine War as of March 17, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 17, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022. Click for full map.

Since my last post on the state of the Ukraine war one week ago, on March 17, very little has changed, with tiny gains and losses in territory by both sides.

The two maps to the right, the top from last week, the bottom from today, both created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, annotated, reduced by me to post here, illustrate the somewhat static situation. The three green arrows in the bottom map point to the regions where the most significant changes have occurred. The red areas of regions under Russian control. The light red regions are areas the Russian claim control, but have not been confirmed. The blue dots and areas indicate Ukrainian advances or resistance.

For the Russians, the biggest territorial gains took place in the northeast, solidly linking two different fronts. The Russians also made minor gains near Chernihiv, northwest of Kiev, and near Donetsk.

Meanwhile, the Russians have still not taken the besieged city of Mariupol, though their forces have finally made some inroads into the city’s center.

For the Ukrainians, a Russian push beyond Mykolaiv in the south was completely defeated and forced to retreat. More importantly, Ukrainian forces have pushed the Russians back on the western outskirts of Kiev.

The primary question remains: Is this situation indicating that Russia is bogged down and facing a long protracted quagmire? Or does it more resemble the American situation shortly after D-Day, when Allied forces were stymied somewhat close to the beaches for almost two months before suddenly breaking out and overrunning much of France in the next two months.
» Read more

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Roscosmos to only accept future payments in rubles

3:10 pm

Shooting yourself in the foot: Dmitry Rogozin today announced that Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos — which controls its entire aerospace industry — will from now on only accept future payments in rubles for foreign companies and countries.

First, because of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine, Roscosmos no longer has much business outside of Russia. There are only a very tiny handful of foreign companies or countries left having contracts with Roscosmos, so this new rule won’t affect many.

Second, this order will guarantee that the last few will flee, and that there will be not any new foreign contracts to follow. The ruble these days is worthless. No one will want to buy rubles to pay Russia. And if they do, it will be a fake paper transaction created only seconds before payment, merely to meet the rule. Why should anyone bother, even China?

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ISS: Breaking up is hard to do

11:00 am

According to this detailed article by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, it will be be very difficult if not impossible for Russia to detach its half from ISS and go its own way.

The article outlines both the technical and legal reasons, and concludes as follows:

In reality, during the coming years, we are more likely to see food riots in Moscow than we are to see a new Russian Space Station or a deep space scientific exploration mission. Some of this will be due to financial concerns, and some of it will come because of a loss of access to technology from the West.

Already, Russia’s main builder of tanks, Uralvagonzavod, appears to have stopped production due to a lack of components. Roscosmos’s big four companies—RKK Energia, RSC Progress, the Khrunichev Center, and NPO Energomash—will likely not be able to keep up production for long for the same reason as the tank factory.

While everything Berger notes is true, I think he underestimates the willingness of rogue nations, as Russia presently is, to break treaties. Also, the agreements Russia has signed expire in 2024, and Russia needs the next few years to launch more modules to have any chance of making its half workable. Whether it can do it is presently doubtful, but not impossible.

This partnership is ending, whether by choice or reality. Expect Russia’s participation in ISS to continually wind down over the next few years.

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Russia launches military communications satellite with Soyuz-2 rocket

8:57 am

Russia today successfully launched its tenth Meridian military communications satellite from its Plesetsk spaceport in the Russian interior, using a Soyuz-2 rocket.

Like China, Russian launches drop the expendable first stages and boosters on land. From the article:

On March 17, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced danger zones in three areas of the Komi Republic: the “Vashka” site in the Udorsky District, and “Zheleznodorozhny” site in the Knyazhpogostsky and Kortkerossky districts. According to the warning, the launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket was planned for March 22, 2022, between 15:00 and 17:00 Moscow Time (8:00 – 10:00 a.m. EDT). Backup launch opportunities were reserved for March 23, 24 and 25.

The announced impact sites matched the ground track required for the mission to access an orbit with an inclination 62.8 degrees toward the Equator, which is used by Meridian military communications satellites.

Such danger zones in Russia are the routine for every launch since Sputnik in 1957. And unlike China Russia never made any effort to develop methods for controlling the crash landing of its first stages.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
4 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 6 in the national rankings.

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OneWeb signs deal with SpaceX to launch its remaining satellites, replacing Russia

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: Just 18 days after its contract with Arianespace was suspended because of Russia invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has now signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch the remaining 200+ satellites in its satellite constellation.

Few details about the agreement were released Monday morning. “Terms of the agreement with SpaceX are confidential,” OneWeb said in a statement.

OneWeb said the “first launch” with SpaceX is expected before the end of this year, suggesting the company anticipates multiple flights on SpaceX rockets.

It appears that launches could start before the end of this year

There are two big losers in this story. The obvious one is Russia, as it has lost OneWeb as a satellite customer. The second, less obvious, is Arianespace, as it appears it has also lost OneWeb as a customer. It will also have to refund OneWeb any payments the satellite company made for launches that have not occurred, even those that Arianespace had paid Russia for which Russia is refusing to refund.

Though no details have been released about the deal, I would not be surprised if OneWeb got a better price than what it was paying Arianespace. I also suspect that Elon Musk was willing to make this deal with OneWeb, the prime competitor to his Starlink satellite constellation, because he favors the Ukraine in this war.

Finally, this deal will not only make Russia look bad, it will make SpaceX look magnificent. Its PR value cannot be measured for the company.

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Rogozin: Lift sanctions by end of March or else!

10:13 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation that runs all of that nations aerospace industry, yesterday demanded that Europe and the U.S. lift its sanctions against Russia by end of March or he would take further action against them.

“We will wait until the end of March. The lack of response or a negative response would be a basis for our decision,” he said, without specifying what kind of decision it would be.

According to the official, the space corporation was not going to yield to the sanctions.

One immediately asks, what happens at the end of March? Why time further space-related actions then?

Well, the only area in which Russia is still cooperating with the west in space is on ISS. At the end of March, Russia will bring home American astronaut Mark Vande Hei using its Soyuz capsule. This suggests that once Vande Hei comes home, Rogozin will announce that Russia will no longer fly any western astronauts to ISS on its rockets or capsules. He might also further announce actions that will accelerate the end of the ISS partnership, including laying out Russia’s schedule for adding modules to its half of ISS and then detaching it from the station.

If so, good. Such an action will bring clarity to the station’s remaining days, forcing NASA to make sure the station can function after the Russian half is gone. It will probably quicken the development of Axiom’s modules to the station, and might encourage the private construction of other modules to pick up the slack left by the Russian exit.

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ESA makes official the split with Russia

9:32 am

At a press conference yesterday officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) officially announced that the partnership with Russia to launch its Franklin rover to Mars has ended, and the launch will not happen in ’22.

The program is not cancelled, but “suspended.” ESA is looking for alternatives to get its Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are correctly aligned for launches only every 26 months, so the next opportunities are in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Aschbacher said it is not feasible to be ready by 2024, so it will be one of the later dates.

Since Russia had been providing both the launch rocket and Mars lander, ESA cannot simply find a different rocket. It needs to come up with its own lander, or find someone else to build it. For example, one of many new private American companies building lunar landers for NASA might be able do it, though ESA would likely prefer a European company. If it did decide to go with an American company, it would certainly not hire one until it succeeds in completing successfully at least one planetary landing.

The officials also outlined ESA’s need to find new launch rockets for many other missions it had planned to launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket. That need will also be an opportunity for American rocket companies, but more significantly it could be a blessing for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket. The Ariane 6 has struggled to find customers because of its high cost. The loss of Russia as a launch option will likely drive some ESA business to it.

Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin in turn announced that it will go ahead with its own Mars mission, using the lander on an Angara rocket

“True, we will lose several years, but we will replicate our landing module, make an Angara rocket for it and carry out this research mission from the newly-built Vostochny spaceport on our own. Without inviting any ‘European friends’, who prefer to keep their tails between their legs the moment they hear their American master’s angry voice,” Rogozin said on his Telegram channel.

Whether Russia will actually do this is questionable. For the last two decades Roscosmos has promised all kinds of numerous planetary missions and new rockets and new manned capsules, none of which has ever seen the light of day. To make such a thing happen now seems even more doubtful.

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Russia launches three Russians to ISS on Soyuz-2 rocket

9:08 am

Russia today successfully launched three astronauts to ISS on its Soyuz-2 rocket, the first time the crew on a Russian launch to ISS was entirely Russian.

The docking at the station is expected three hours after launch.

The reason for the all-Russian crew has nothing to do with the Ukraine War. Initially NASA and Roscosmos were negotiating to have an American on this flight as part of a barter deal, whereby astronauts from the two space agencies fly on each other’s capsules in an even trade to gain experience with each. In October both agencies agreed to hold off the first barter flight until ’22. With the on-going sanctions however it is now unknown whether that barter deal will go forward.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

10 SpaceX
6 China
3 Russia
2 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 16 to 6 in the national rankings, with SpaceX having a scheduled Starlink launch this evening.

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Update on the actual state of the Ukraine War

3:31 pm

Much of the reporting about the war in the Ukraine has been either based on individual anecdotal events, or propaganda being churned out by both sides in an effort to influence events and public opinion to their cause.

All of this information is generally useless in determining what is really happening.

A better way to understand the actual state of the war, who is winning and who is not, is to find sources that don’t look at individual events, but try to compile all the reliable and confirmed stories into an overall whole.

One source that does this routinely and with great success is the Institute for the Study of War. I have relied on their maps and reports for a clear understanding of the various Middle Eastern conflicts now for years. One week ago I posted a link to the Institute’s March 9, 2022 update on the Ukraine War, because I believed it provided the best review, well documented and sourced, covering Russia’s entire military operation in the Ukraine, as well as the effort of the Ukraine to fight back. At that time, the known data strongly suggested that though Russia appeared to be very slowly capturing territory, it was also meeting heavy resistance everywhere. Furthermore, Russia’s effort was hampered by a lagging logistics and supply operation. All told, this data suggested that Russia’s take-over of the Ukraine was going to take a lot longer than expected by Putin and his generals, and might even get bogged down into a long quagmire similar to what the Soviet Union experienced in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

A week has passed, and the Institute has issued several updates since. By comparing today’s March 17th update with last week’s we can quickly get a sense of what has happened in that week.
» Read more

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Overview of the impact Russia’s invasion is having on the Ukraine’s space industry

9:57 am

Link here. The summary focuses on the major aerospace regions in the Ukraine, Dnipro and Kharkiv, outlining how they have so far been untargeted by the Russian invasion.

“In Dnipro, Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye have not been bombed or targeted by missile attacks so far. One of the possible reasons is that Russia’s plan is to take them over as part of their invasion, so they intend to keep these facilities intact,” Usov said. “Because of the Russian attacks in the Dnipro region, these facilities are not operating at full capacities, and they were forced to halt work on their projects. But a share of their employees ensures their operations continue.”

The situation is the same in Kharkiv. No aerospace facilities have been directly targeted, but the war has shut down some operations, while others — especially those partnering with western nations or companies — have gone almost entirely virtual.

The article also describes a Ukrainian startup, Orbit Boy, that is trying to develop an air-launched smallsat rocket in partnership with companies in Poland and Italy. The war is making this development difficult, if not impossible.

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OneWeb and Arianespace scramble to find a rocket to launch satellites

10:26 am

Capitalism in space: With the cancellation of the last six Soyuz-2 launches for OneWeb and Arianespace due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, the two companies are struggling to find an alternative rocket to launch the remaining 216 satellites that would complete OneWeb’s satellite constellation.

OneWeb has already paid Arianespace for the launches, so the responsibility to get the satellites in orbit is at present Arianespace’s. The problem is that its flight manifest for both the Ariane-5 (being retired) and the new Ariane-6 rocket are presently full.

Going to another rocket provider is problematic, even if a deal could be negotiated. The flight manifest for ULA’s Atlas-5 and Vulcan rockets is also filled. Though SpaceX’s Falcon 9 could probably launch the satellites, that company’s Starlink satellite constellation is in direct competition with OneWeb, which makes it unlikely the two companies could make a deal.

There have been negotiations with India to use its rockets, but it is unclear at present whether this will work.

One other option is to buy a lot of launches from the smallsat rockets of Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbiter, and Astra. This will likely cost more because more launches will be required, and that would required a complex negotiation between all parties.

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Entire Russian communications satellite industry threatened by Russia’s Ukraine invasion

9:12 am

Because almost all Russian communications satellites rely on western components, the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of the Ukraine will likely prevent the future launch of any such satellites.

The overwhelmingly wide sanctions against the Kremlin left practically no chance for Russia to complete any of its communications satellites in the development pipeline at the time due to their dependency on Western payloads.

Conceivably, Russia could turn to China for necessary components or/and Moscow could try again developing necessary competencies inside the country, but given little signs of progress on both of those fronts in the past, it could probably take years if not decades before all the technological gaps could be closed and it would be even more difficult to do under much harsher economic conditions and export controls. It is also a question whether China would be interested in boosting strategically important industries in Russia with potential military implications or whether it would want to challenge the Western sanctions regime by putting at risk its far more important trade relations with the United States.

The article at the link also notes the generally low quality of Russian communications satellites, which for example generally last only five to six years, compared to the 10 to 15 year lifespan of western satellites. This low quality has meant that Russia has been unable to sell this technology to anyone outside Russia.

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Russia today confirmed it will return NASA astronaut as planned

9:12 am

As expected, Russia today confirmed in its state-run TASS news agency that NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will come back to Earth in its Soyuz capsule on March 30th, as planned.

The Soyuz MS-19 space capsule with Anton Shkaplerov, Pyotr Dubrov and Mark Vande Hei is expected to land on March 30. Dubrov and Vande Hei arrived on the ISS in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft together with Oleg Novitsky. This descent module brought back to Earth the two feature film crew members – actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko, who had arrived on the ISS together with Anton Shkaplerov in the Soyuz MS-19 on October 5.

There had been a number of stories in the mainstream press suggesting the Russians would leave Vande Hei behind in response to the international sanctions being imposed on Russia because of its invasion of the Ukraine. All were based on a single comment by Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin, who had simply noted visuals from a Russian news source and aired in the U.S. that showed the Russian half of ISS separating away and leaving Vande Hei behind. Rogozin was only noting that the U.S. press was worried about this possibility.

There was no chance the Russians would separate its half of ISS now. Zero. To do such a thing will require several months of preparation. For example, the Russian half has at least one module, Zvezda, that is failing. If Russia ever creates its own new space station using part of ISS, it will have to launch some new modules first.

Also, for Russia to leave Vande Hei behind would be a public relations disaster that would only make worse the disaster of its invasion of the Ukraine. Russia might end its partnership at ISS in the near future, but it won’t do it in a way that might threaten the lives of any astronauts, from any nation.

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Russia to lose seventeen launches due to Ukraine sanctions

9:43 am

This article at Space News today provides a nice summary of the number of launches that Russia’s Roscosmos will likely lose in the next three years due to the break off of commercial operations against that country because of its invasion of the Ukraine.

According to the article, Russia will lose sixteen launches. The list however misses one South Korean satellite scheduled for launch on an Angara rocket later this year. The total breakdown of this lost business is therefore as follows:

13 launches lost in 2022
3 launches lost in 2023
1 launch lost in 2024

The entities impacted are as follows:

Government launches:
Europe: six launches in ’22 and ’23, totaling eight satellites
South Korea: two launches in ’22
Sweden: one launch in ’22

Commercial launches:
OneWeb: six launches in ’22, totaling 199 satellites
Axelspace: one launch, totaling four satellites
Synspective: one launch

If the Ukraine War were to end today, it is possible that most of the government launches would be reinstated. The commercial companies however are almost certainly going to find other launch providers, no matter what. OneWeb for example is hardly going to trust its business to Russia after that country cancelled the launches and (at least at this moment) has confiscated the already delivered satellites.

If the war continues for another two or three months, then all this business will vanish for good, as alternative rocket companies will likely be found.

This list however does reveal one interesting fact. It appears that very few private companies have been interested in buying Russian launch services, with or without the Ukraine War. Most of Russia’s international customers have been other governments. Even OneWeb falls partly into this category, as it is half owned by the United Kingdom.

This fact suggests that Russia’s product has simply not been competitive against the new commercial market. The governments meanwhile probably had political motives in addition to economics to throw their business Russia’s way. Those political motives are now gone.

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The actual state of the Ukraine War

2:28 pm

Though nothing at this moment is certain, this update report yesterday from the Institute for the Study of War is likely the best quick summary, including a very informative map.

Russian operations to continue the encirclement of and assault on Kyiv have likely begun, although on a smaller scale and in a more ad hoc manner than ISW expected. The equivalent of a Russian reinforced brigade reportedly tried to advance toward Kyiv through its western outskirts and made little progress. Smaller operations continued slowly to consolidate and gradually to extend the encirclement to the southwest of the capital. Russian operations in the eastern approaches to Kyiv remain in a lull, likely because the Russians are focusing on securing the long lines of communication running to those outskirts from Russian bases around Sumy and Chernihiv in the face of skillful and determined Ukrainian harassment of those lines. The battle for Kyiv is likely to continue to be a drawn-out affair unless the Russians can launch a more concentrated and coherent attack than they have yet shown the ability to conduct.

The Russian military is clearly struggling to mobilize reserve manpower to offset losses and fill out new units.

Russia appears to be very very very slowly gaining ground, but meeting heavy resistance everywhere, while struggling with its own lagging logistics and cumbersome military.

What strikes me as most strange about this entire war is the relatively little use of air forces by either side. Russia’s air bombing efforts have paled compared to other recent wars.

The Ukraine’s has even been less active. Consider: Russia had a forty-mile-long convoy in plain sight backed up for days on the main road from Russia to Kiev. What a sitting target! The Ukraine apparently had no air force capability to hit it.

Based on the present known data, this war will drag on for a very long time, even if Russia eventually takes control of the Ukraine. In the meantime it has made itself a pariah with the rest of the world’s nations for its unjustified invasion of a neighboring country, not unlike Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This in turn is crashing the Russian economy.

All in all, even at its best a victory in this Russian war will be a Pyrrhic victory.

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UK bans all space-related exports to Russia

8:52 am

In response to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, the United Kingdom yesterday announced new sanctions, banning all space-related exports as well as increased sanctions on aviation.

For Russia, this component of these new space sanctions might be the most painful, should something go wrong on one of its launches:

The space export ban includes all related services, including insurance or reinsurance services, U.K. officials said. “This means cover is withdrawn on existing policies and UK insurers and reinsurers will be unable to pay claims in respect of existing policies in these sectors,” wrote in the statement.

This restriction also means that any satellite customers will not be able to claim damages. Thus, customers like South Korea, which still has two launches planned on Russia rockets, will lose everything if the launch fails. Because of this, it is almost certain that it will cancel these launches,

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Bahrain signs Artemis Accords

8:57 am

Bahrain announced today that it has signed Artemis Accords, making it the second Arab country, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to do so.

The full list of signatories, now seventeen: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

In the past week both Bahrain and Romania have joined the accords. The timing suggests both actions might have been triggered by the Ukraine War. Russia opposes the Artemis Accords, and for Romania, a former Soviet block nation, and Bahrain, an Arab nation, to make such announcements so quickly after Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine suggests both are signalling their willingness to ally themselves against Russia.

For this western alliance in space to be complete however it will require that France and Germany as well as more members of the European Space Agency (ESA) to sign on. Before Russia’s invasion these two nations as well as other ESA partners were considering allying themselves with either Russia or China (which also opposes the accords) in future space endeavors. Such an alliance would have prevented them from signing the accords.

The Russian invasion has almost certainly ended any chance these European nations will partner with Russia in space. Thus, it is very likely Russia’s invasion will force them back into a more firm space alliance with the U.S., and get them to sign the accords. If the American State Department has any competence (something we should not expect) it will be jumping on this situation and ramping up its pressure on Europe to sign on.

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UK rocket startup Skyrora badly impacted by the Ukraine War

9:16 am

The smallsat rocket startup Skyrora appears to be badly impacted by the Ukraine War, since half its employees work in the Ukraine and the founder of this United Kingdom company is Volodymyr Levykin, a Ukrainian entrepreneur.

Skyrora, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, has about 80 employees in Dnipro, working on research and development of new manufacturing methods and materials, Levykin said.

“From day one, the priority for everyone in Ukraine was the family, then the country and then the company,” said Levykin, who comes from a small town near Dnipro. “And that’s what I told our team. Some of our people managed to move somewhere away from Dnipro, but the majority are staying there and showing significant resilience during this challenging time.”

It more and more appears that one of the biggest fallouts from the Ukraine War will be the destruction of that country’s aerospace industry. From the article at the link:

The Ukrainian space community will watch the developments in Dnipro anxiously. The rocket research and manufacturing facilities, worth billions of dollars, could not only fall into Russian hands but also face irreparable destruction, Ukraine’s former space chief Volodymyr Usov told Space.com in an earlier interview. Due to the amount of toxic rocket fuels and other chemicals, a rocket strike at Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye could also cause a major environmental disaster, Usov said.

Russia certainly wants to recapture these space assets without damaging them, but that might not be possible. And even if this happens, any partnerships between western and Ukrainian aerospace companies — such as Skyrora’s — will vanish, and will likely not be renewed after the war ends. No commercial company is going to risk any investment with Russia for many years.

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Confirmed: Tomorrow’s OneWeb launch on Soyuz-2 rocket cancelled

8:57 am

Russia’s state-run press today confirmed that the launch tomorrow of another 36 OneWeb satellites on a Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur has been cancelled.

The decision was announced by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.

He also instructed to stop preparations for the launch of British OneWeb communications satellites from three spaceports. “All the launches from all Russian launch pads in Kourou, in Baikonur and at the Vostochny Cosmodrome involving the OneWeb company are to be stopped,” the Roscosmos CEO said.

Rogozin has already said that Russia will not refund OneWeb any money it paid for any of the cancelled launches. Nor will Russia return the OneWeb satellites in Kazakhstan to OneWeb.

Meanwhile, it appears that OneWeb is aggressively searching for new launch alternatives.

“We’re looking at U.S., Japanese and Indian options,” Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb’s chief of government, regulatory affairs and engagement, said March 3. “But in the first instance, we’re pointing to Ariane and saying you still owe us a number of launches.”

This statement implies that OneWeb is trying to get Arianespace to pick up the cost of any launches where Russia has been paid but will not launch. This way OneWeb won’t have to pay twice for the launch. This strategy will only work if the partners in the European Space Agency, which owns Arianespace, decide to cover OneWeb’s losses to Russia, which makes this a political decision.

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Russia blocks future rocket engine sales to U.S.

1:45 pm

Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, today announced that Russia will no longer sell any rocket engines to U.S. companies.

The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced the new policy in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel. “Today we have made a decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash to the United States,” Rogozin said in the interview, according to Russia’s state press site Tass. “Let me remind you that these deliveries had been quite intensive somewhere since the mid-1990s.” Rogozin also added: “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what,” according to Reuters.

Russian engines are used on two American rockets, ULA’s Atlas-5 and Northrop Grumman’s Antares. The Atlas-4 however is being phased out, and has already received all the engines it needs for all of that rocket’s remaining flights. ULA plans to replace it with its new Vulcan rocket, using Blue Origin’s (long delayed) BE-4 engine.

Antares however is a more serious issue. Northrop Grumman uses this rocket to launch Cygnus freighters to ISS. It depends on two Russian engines for its Ukrainian-built first stage. The Ukraine War now probably makes building more Antares rockets impossible, which means at some point Northrop Grumman will no longer be able to supply ISS with cargo using Cygnus. Furthermore, NASA’s plan to use Cygnus’ engines to maintain ISS’s orbit will be impacted if Cygnus launches to ISS cease.

There is an option, though it too has issues. ULA has already launched one Cygnus to ISS using its Atlas-5. Though this rocket is going away, ULA could probably use its Vulcan instead — assuming Blue Origin finally gets the BE-4 engine operational so that Vulcan can finally launch.

Overall, Russia’s decision might cause a temporary blip in the American space effort, but if the government doesn’t get in the way I think that competition will force a solution. As Aesop said, necessity is the mother of invention.

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Launch of two South Korean satellites threatened by Russia’s Ukraine war

10:02 am

According to South Korean officials, the launch later this year of two new home-built satellites on Russian rockets is now unlikely because of the sanctions imposed because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

South Korea’s CAS500-2 remote sensing satellite is set to launch in the first half of this year on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. South Korea’s KOMPSAT-6 multipurpose satellite, equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), is due to launch in the second half of the year on a Russian Angara rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

“For now, nothing has changed to the plan,” Korea Aerospace Research Institute spokesman Roh Hyung-il told SpaceNews. “We are taking a close look at how the situation unfolds because it could have a significant impact on our missions.” He admitted that it’s “very likely” that the satellites won’t be launched as planned.

Those officials also said that losing Russia as a launch option will be a “serious blow” to South Korea’s entire space effort. I find that puzzling. There are plenty of other rocket companies now available. Why South Korea feels a need to depend on Russia seems short-sighted.

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