The Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) completed development of the draft Federal Space Program for 2016-2025. The total expenses were cut by more than 400 billion rubles to 2 trillion rubles. In order to cut the expenses Roscosmos had to abandon projects for development and production of some research spacecraft, super-heavy rocket and 29 research and development projects in order to keep the manned spaceflight to the Moon in the program. The agency hopes that the program may even be profitable in some segments, Kommersant reports.
Most of the projects included in the Space Program were developed under the guidance of the former head of Roscosmos Oleg Ostapenko: 2,436 trillion rubles were required to implement those projects (2,117 trillion rubles should have been allocated from the federal budget, 319 billion rubles – from non-budgetary sources). However, Ostapenko ran out of time and did not manage to submit the draft program for consideration by the government, while his successor Igor Komarov had to cut down the expenses specified in the program due to economic crisis: cost of the projects increased by an average of 30%, while budgetary funding decreased. We remind you that the Federal Space Program 2015, which expires this year, required 757,1 billion rubles (budgetary funding) and 77,1 billion rubles (non-budgetary funding) respectively.
The draft Federal Space Program 2025 shows that two scenarios were considered. The first one assumed implementation of projects in the areas of space communications, Earth remote sensing, fundamental space research, ISS missions and research activities. On the other hand, projects related to development of the next-generation manned transport spacecraft, control systems for deep space and equipment for maintenance of satellites in the orbit, as well as moon base and super-heavy rocket should have been terminated.
The second scenario assumed minimizing the number of communication, Earth remote sensing (ERS) satellites as well as the ones used in the network of fundamental space research (FSR). Moreover, development of scientific satellites (as well as satellites, which are of social and economic importance) should have been postponed by two or five years, and the number of launches of Progress spacecraft should have been reduced from 4 to 3 ones per year. On the other hand, this scenario allows continuing the development of the next-generation manned transport spacecraft, components of the super-heavy rocket (its development should be started after 2025) and also develop medium and heavy launch vehicles with a payload of up to 38 tons, as well as space tugs intended for manned flight around the Moon scheduled for 2025.
Roscosmos believes that despite minimization of orbital constellations of the communication, ERS and FSR satellites, the second scenario will assure implementation of the “Basic policy of Russian Federation in the area of space activities until 2030” (increase the bitrate of the data relay system to 2,4 Gb/s, and the bitrate of personal communication – to 60 Gb/day). According to a source close to Roscosmos, the First Deputy of TsNIIMash (Central Research Institute of Machine Building) Alexander Danilyuk recommended to support the second scenario at the meeting of Science and Technology Council of Roscosmos held on April 15th 2015. And that was exactly what the Federal Space Agency did.