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August 16 news, early Thursday morning local time,RussiaThe Progress cargo spacecraft was successfully launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, completing the country's ninth orbital launch mission this year.

At this rate, this year could be the year Russia sees the largestRocketThe year with the fewest launches. That year, Yuri Gagarin launched into space for the first time, ushering in the era of human spaceflight.

There are many reasons for this. In recent weeks, the Russian FederationSpace Agency“We are trying to get out of the financial crisis, and it’s not easy,” said Andrei Yelchaninov, the first deputy director, in an interview. “I want to remind you that Roscosmos lost 180 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) due to contract cancellations. This forced us to build a new economic model under difficult conditions,” he added.

The Russian space industry has been losing money in recent years and may not break even until 2025. This came after the United Launch Alliance (ULA) stopped buying RD-180 rocket engines made by NPO Energomash. This change, along with a drop in commercial demand for Russia's Proton and Soyuz rockets, forced the Russian government to subsidize Roscosmos.

Yelchaninov said the companies are currently undergoing financial restructuring and that state subsidies have helped keep them afloat, and now they are exploring new markets and increasing their workloads. Asked whether it would be possible to sell more Russian-made rocket engines to the United States, Yelchaninov replied: "This question is not on the agenda."

"We have had to shift from traditional partners in Europe and the United States, with whom we have worked for many years, to new international markets, including countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia," he said.

Yelchaninov confirmed in the interview that Russia has pledged to remain involved in international cooperation “at least” until 2028.space stationNASA is pushing to extend the life of the International Space Station until 2030, when the United States plans to use a modified Crew Dragon spacecraft to deorbit the aging station.

He also said that Russia's space program will focus more on cooperation with China rather than competition. He said: "The key project of our bilateral cooperation is to build an international lunar station, and we are working together to attract more international partners."

In addition, Russia is continuing to advance the Russian Orbital Space Station (ROS) project, which has been delayed several times. The current plan is to launch the science and power modules in 2027, and all four core modules into orbit in 2030, with further expansion of the station in the early 2030s. However, these dates can only be considered as targets for now.

Yelchaninov also mentioned some future rocket projects, including the Amur-LNG carrier rocket and the Corona rocket.

In 2020, Russia plans to launch the Amur-LNG launch vehicle, which uses methane fuel and has a reusable first-stage booster, by 2026. The rocket is being developed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in terms of cost. Yelchaninov said that the Russian Federal Space Agency intends to develop a reusable first-stage booster in two stages. The first stage will test landing technology similar to SpaceX's "Grasshopper" program, followed by experiments with a complete booster. However, the debut of the Amur-LNG launch vehicle may not come soon. Yelchaninov revealed that Russian and Kazakh officials are still in the stage of designing the recovery platform at the Baikonur launch site and have not started actual construction.

He also said Roscosmos hopes to develop a single-stage orbital rocket called Corona in the future, which appears to be an update of a Russian rocket design that is more than 30 years old.

"We have studied whether there is a demand for this new booster," Yelchaninov said. "The answer is obvious. We will reduce the cost of access to space by more than an order of magnitude, open up completely new opportunities for ultra-fast delivery of cargo, and move towards the concept of 'space as a service'."

However, it may be too early to expect the Corona rocket to fly anytime soon.