The future of Russia’s launch vehicle fleet

Having a national fleet of launch vehicles is one of the key factors in ensuring a country’s independent guaranteed access to space. Russia at present possesses a necessary and sufficient variety of expendable launchers to achieve all the current space exploration goals, but the ageing technical capabilities of these vehicles necessitate the development of new-generation rockets.

Russia’s light launch vehicles are represented by the Rockot, Dnepr, and Strela designs; its medium-class launchers are the Soyuz family and the Russo-Ukrainian Zenit model; the country’s heavy vehicle is the Proton-M. In the first nine months of this year, Russia performed 21 space launches. Two Rockots together inserted six communications satellites in orbit; nine spacecraft were orbited in 11 Soyuz launches, alongside three Soyuz TMA manned ships and three Progress M resupply vehicles; six Protons delivered a total of eight satellites (one of these launches failed); one Dnepr carried a South Korean satellite to orbit, and one Strela lofted a Kondor-E radar satellite. A Zenit orbited Israel’s Amos-4 telecom satellite. Another 13 launches are planned before the end of the year.

Russian launch vehicles have sufficient thrust-to-weight ratios, relatively high reliability, and come with an agreeable launch price tag. These factors, as well as the high frequency of launches (by Western standards), make them internationally competitive. As a result, Russia leads the world in the number of commercial space launches with 40% of the market.