Roscosmos buys Earth observation data from private Russian satellite company
According to a report today by Russia’s state-run news agency TASS, Roscosmos has awarded a commercial contract to a private Russian satellite company, dubbed Sputnix, to purchase earth observation data its satellites have already collected.
“In 2024, up to 1.4 billion rubles [around $14.285 million] were allocated in budget funds to conclude forward contracts with private companies on buying out Earth’s remote sensing data obtained from their satellites and created under the federal project ‘Developing the Advanced Space Systems and Services High-Tech Sector.’ The first contract on buying out data has been concluded with the Sputnix Group of Companies,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
The Sputnix Group confirmed to TASS that the contract had been signed.
“Under the contract, the data already loaded into the database were bought out. We hope that next year we will be able to sign a forward contract as part of implementing the roadmap for the ‘Advanced Space Systems and Services’ project,” the company said, emphasizing that cooperation with Roscosmos remained a priority for Sputnix.
Sputnix was founded in 2011, and has so far launched 20 satellites into orbit, though many were short-lived cubesats. While on the surface this company appears real, it is not unlike the pseudo-companies in China. Its contracts appear to be almost all with the Russian government, all its work appears supervised by that government, and at any moment the Russian government can take it over, as it essentially did with the effort of the so-called private rocket startup S7 to launch from the Sea Launch ocean platform.
In other words, this news piece is simply the Russian government’s attempt to convince the world and its own people that there is a competitive and independent private sector in Russia, when in reality it doesn’t exist.
According to a report today by Russia’s state-run news agency TASS, Roscosmos has awarded a commercial contract to a private Russian satellite company, dubbed Sputnix, to purchase earth observation data its satellites have already collected.
“In 2024, up to 1.4 billion rubles [around $14.285 million] were allocated in budget funds to conclude forward contracts with private companies on buying out Earth’s remote sensing data obtained from their satellites and created under the federal project ‘Developing the Advanced Space Systems and Services High-Tech Sector.’ The first contract on buying out data has been concluded with the Sputnix Group of Companies,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
The Sputnix Group confirmed to TASS that the contract had been signed.
“Under the contract, the data already loaded into the database were bought out. We hope that next year we will be able to sign a forward contract as part of implementing the roadmap for the ‘Advanced Space Systems and Services’ project,” the company said, emphasizing that cooperation with Roscosmos remained a priority for Sputnix.
Sputnix was founded in 2011, and has so far launched 20 satellites into orbit, though many were short-lived cubesats. While on the surface this company appears real, it is not unlike the pseudo-companies in China. Its contracts appear to be almost all with the Russian government, all its work appears supervised by that government, and at any moment the Russian government can take it over, as it essentially did with the effort of the so-called private rocket startup S7 to launch from the Sea Launch ocean platform.
In other words, this news piece is simply the Russian government’s attempt to convince the world and its own people that there is a competitive and independent private sector in Russia, when in reality it doesn’t exist.