Facing “financial crisis,” Russia on pace for lowest launch total in 6 decades

Enlarge / A Soyuz 2.1b rocket booster with a Frigate upper stage block, the Meteor-M 2-1 meteorological satellite, and 18 small satellites launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome. (credit: Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A Progress cargo supply spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Thursday, local time. The mission was successful, and Russia has launched hundreds of these spacecraft before. So it wasn’t all that big of a deal, except for one small detail: this was just Russia’s ninth orbital launch of the year.

At this pace, it appears that the country’s space program is on pace for the fewest number of Russian or Soviet space launches in a year since 1961. That was when Yuri Gagarin went to space at the dawn of the human spaceflight era.

There are myriad reasons for this, including a decision by Western space powers to distance themselves from the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, after the invasion of Ukraine. This has had disastrous effects for the Russian space program, but only recently have we gotten any insight into how deep those impacts have cut.