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Russia's space program seeks to restore its reputation for reliability after a failed launch in the face of unprecedented foreign competition for entry into orbit.
On Monday, the Roscosmos agency will attempt to send its first crew into space aboard a Soyuz. The rocket since the failure of a recall on a similar model forced the Russians Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague to abandon their mission a few minutes after the takeoff of October. They perform the first emergency landing since 1975.
NASA Associate Administrator, William Gerstenmaier, plans to attend the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to transport the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, American astronaut Anne McClain and Canadian David Saint-Jacques to the international space. Station. A successful mission will not, however, dissipate storm clouds on the horizon of the Russian space program.
Roscosmos' recent setbacks, including a series of unsuccessful launches and charges of spending abuse, tarnished the Soviet legacy, the world's first inhabited space program. By adding to his problems, he is now facing the prospect of a revenue cut as his seven-year monopoly on the transportation of people to the space station comes to an end.
"They are obviously concerned" by the loss of revenue resulting from the orbiting of American astronauts, Gerstenmaier said in an interview in Moscow before traveling to Baikonaur. "They share some of the same problems as us – their budget is limited in our countries and space flights are part of the discretionary budget."
Less Expensive Rockets
The billionaire Elon Musk's Space Explorations Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. have signed contracts for the delivery of astronauts to the ISS from next year as part of NASA's Commercial Crew project. A large number of start-ups around the world are also using cheaper rockets to place satellites in space, which is a challenge for the lucrative Roscosmos launch business.
The Roscosmos press service declined to comment on NASA's potential revenue loss. The United States has earned about $ 2.6 billion for the transportation of astronauts and equipment into the ISS since NASA withdrew its fleet of space shuttles in 2011.
The market share of Russia for rocket technology worldwide fell slightly in 2017, which Roscosmos blamed on sanctions, weak rubles and heightened competition, according to its annual report released on Friday. He singled out SpaceX for allegedly undercutting the market thanks to help from the US government
Russia, which depends on technology developed decades ago in the Soviet Union, may be increasingly out of date new race to space. While NASA signed a contract to send astronauts to the ISS with Roscosmos until February 2020, it will stop paying for seats at Soyuz if the commercial crew program runs as planned said Gerstenmaier.
'Basically stolen'
Unexpected financing from the United States has not always been spent wisely. Alexei Kudrin, chairman of the country's accounts chamber, told the lower house of the Russian parliament in June that he had uncovered 760 billion rubles ($ 11.4 billion) in financial offenses in the Roscosmos books.
"Several billion have been spent, basically stolen, we are currently investigating," Kudrin said in an interview broadcast on November 25 to the public channel Rossiya 24. "Roscosmos is the champion in terms of the scale of such violations. "
Kudrin's criticism of a 2017 audit, Roscosmos told Tbad press service.
The agency was faced with a series of other problems. A critical defect has been discovered on a launch pad of its new cosmodrome, Vostochny, in the Russian Far East, the RBC newspaper reported last week. Separately, a commission is still studying the cause of a mysterious hole discovered on a Russian module of the ISS. According to Gerstenmaier, an outing in space is scheduled on December 11 to deepen the examination of the issue, although a final report is not expected until February.
Still, the Soyuz remains the most used launcher in history and Roscosmos unmanned successful launches since the failure of October, attributable to a damaged sensor during badembly.
"We see tremendous benefits in working together and cooperating," said Gerstenmaier. If the two agencies are also looking for "different capabilities, or there is even some competition in some areas, that is also beneficial," he said.
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