Book extract: The Future of Geography by Tim Marshall
Chapter 7: Russia In Retrograde
Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.
– Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, “Father of Cosmonautics”
RUSSIA HAS SHOWN IT IS ABLE AND WILLING TO FIRE ROCKETS at densely populated civilian areas, but its world-renowned prowess in firing them into space may be faltering. The two things are connected.
In February 2022, on the same day that Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the American government announced wide-ranging sanctions against Moscow. Among them were those intended to “degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program,” with embargoes on semiconductors, lasers, sensors and navigation equipment.
Dmitry Rogozin, then chief of the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, was unimpressed. Russia and the USA have collaborated on the ISS since 1998, but in a tweet to his 800,000 followers he said, “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and falling on US or European territory?” The Russians control the propulsion required to prevent the station from falling back to Earth, while the Americans supply the life support system.
It was standard fare. Previously, Rogozin had demonstrated his nationalist credentials by suggesting that American astronauts should try getting to the ISS on trampolines rather than Russian rockets, which they had been using for some years. The day after the sanctions were imposed he switched vehicles, saying: “Let them fly on something else: their broomsticks.”
America’s SpaceX hit back. Elon Musk’s company was already working to deliver its Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine, as we’ve seen. On 9 March a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a batch of satellites was seconds away from lift-off. Viewers of the event’s live feed heard launch director Julia Black tell her team, “Time to let the American broomstick fly and hear the sounds of freedom.”
Mr Rogozin called veteran US astronaut Scott Kelly a moron, hinted that Russia might leave a NASA astronaut behind on the ISS and published footage of technicians taping over the American flag on a Soyuz rocket. Back came Kelly: “Without those flags and the foreign exchange they bring in, your space program won’t be worth a damn. Maybe you can find a job at McDonald’s if McDonald’s still exists in Russia.” It doesn’t.
At one level it was all good knockabout stuff, but at another we were watching a decades-old space partnership crash and burn, ending a relationship that had been beneficial for science, for détente and for humanity. The geopolitical fault lines in space were being redrawn. The events of 2022 make it more likely that Russia will step away from exploration and concentrate on military applications in space. They also accelerated the division of space activity into two blocs: one led by China, the other by the USA.
The repercussions were widespread. In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent sanctions, Moscow said it would no longer sell rocket engines to the USA, but this was a limited blow to the Americans given that they were already weaning themselves off relying on Russia for most things space-related. It announced that it would cease working with Germany on joint scientific experiments aboard the ISS. The Germans stopped all scientific cooperation with Russia, which included switching off a German-built space telescope that was hunting for black holes in a joint Russian–German project.
Roskosmos halted launches of Soyuz rockets from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana and withdrew its workforce. The Guiana Space Centre is where high-profile missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope had been launched. The suspension delayed the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars programme, which had been due to launch a mission to the Red Planet. The ESA officially ended its relationship with Roskosmos on 12 July and began to look for a new way to get Mars-bound. The last straw may have come a few days before, when Roskosmos published photos of cosmonauts on board the ISS holding flags of two regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.
Roskosmos also announced that it would not launch thirty-six satellites for the London-based OneWeb unless it guaranteed they would not be used for military purposes. They had been due to launch from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It also demanded the “withdrawal of the British government from the shareholders of OneWeb,” as the UK had helped the company avoid bankruptcy in 2020. OneWeb refused and said it was suspending all launches from the site. SpaceX then helped OneWeb launch its satellites despite being a competitor.
There were many losers from this sorry episode of tit for tat, including Dmitry Rogozin, who was dismissed from Roskosmos a few days after the ESA cut ties with it. But the biggest loser was Russia and its space programme, which looks set to decline.
Russia had already been losing market share in the competition for sales of rocket engines, satellite launch services and deliveries of astronauts to the ISS. After the US Space Shuttle fleet was retired in 2011, NASA had to hitch rides on Soyuz craft to get there (hence Rogozin’s jibe about “broomsticks”). But since 2020, NASA has also had the option of SpaceX Dragons with which to make the journey.
Because of the unique situation on board the ISS, a working relationship had to be maintained, even amid the furore; but now Russia does not appear interested in helping NASA to extend the station’s working life up to 2030. Given the dire state of relations between Moscow and Washington, it is highly unlikely that NASA will invite Roskosmos to collaborate on the US-led Lunar Gateway, nor will private American companies be rushing to partner with it on the multiple commercial space stations that are in concept development.
Russia has been cut off from most of the planet’s space cooperation, funding and expertise just as the sector is expanding more rapidly than it has for decades. Russia’s best days in cosmology look to be behind it; its future may be as the junior member in a Sino-Russian partnership. It is a far cry from when the Red Star shone so very, very brightly in the firmament of science and human endeavour.
The Soviets achieved a number of stunning firsts, from Sputnik to the first man in space, and even after they lost the race to get to the Moon their spacefaring prowess continued. On and out they went, as far as Venus and Mars, and up into low Earth orbit to build a series of space stations, including the very first, Salyut 1, in 1971, as they concentrated on technologies to allow a long-term human presence in space. But their success was not to last.
The Soviet Union was dissolved in late 1991 and early the following year the Soviet space programme was replaced by the Russian Federal Space Agency, which eventually became Roskosmos. With the economy in turmoil, the government made severe cuts to the space budget throughout the 1990s, despite its leading role on the ISS.
And that hasn’t all been sweetness and bright light. A recent series of incidents involving the ISS has outraged Russia’s partners.
In 2018 the Russian state-owned TASS news agency published an extraordinary article about the US astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor. Without offering any proof, it effectively accused her of having an “acute psychological crisis” on board the ISS and drilling a hole in a docked Soyuz capsule. The reason? According to the defamatory TASS report, it was because the hole would have slowly depressurized the whole station, requiring her to be flown back home immediately.
There was indeed a hole, and it was patched up. Where and when it happened has not been established, leaving open the possibility that it had occurred on the ground. But the idea that an American astronaut, in space, had caused it deliberately was beyond ludicrous and suggested that someone somewhere was trying to shift the blame. The Russians even sent two crew members out on a spacewalk to gather “evidence”; cosmonaut versions of detectives Clouseau and Poirot took knives with them and cut away some of the insulation from the outside of the Soyuz craft to investigate the “scene of the crime.” The official Russian report into the incident has not been released.
In 2021 there was an even more dangerous occurrence. The good news: Russia’s 20-tonne Nauka laboratory module successfully docked with the ISS. Nauka means “science” in Russian, and the module gave Roskosmos a plethora of new experimental capabilities. And an extra toilet. The bad news: three hours after docking Nauka’s thrusters began firing, sending the whole station into a cartwheel. American and Russian mission control liaised and began firing thrusters on the other side of the station to bring it back under control. The emergency went on for almost an hour and ended only when Nauka ran out of fuel. Roskosmos said little about the incident, but eventually blamed it on Ukrainian-built machinery in Nauka’s propellant tanks.
Neither of these two events, however, matched the 2021 incident when Russia destroyed one of its obsolete satellites, sending space debris hurtling towards the ISS. The international space community lined up to condemn the Russian action. All these events coincided with the deterioration in cooperation between Russia and the USA and European powers. The arc of the relationship was already heading downwards even before Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, but the annexation of what legally remains Ukrainian territory accelerated the trajectory.
President Putin has made no secret of his desire to reverse the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, an entity he’s described as “another name for Russia.” With all the former Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO at the first opportunity, he watched with alarm as, in his view, NATO advanced towards Russia’s borders.
This century he has worked to restore Russia as a world power, mostly through its military. After the Soviet Union’s forces were disbanded, Moscow created Russian Space Forces in 1992. This went through several iterations and is now a sub-branch of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. Bringing the two together was part of an attempt to create an efficient single command with responsibility for all military aspects of aerospace. In this aspect it was four years ahead of the USA. According to its web page, Russian Space Forces is tasked with monitoring space for incoming threats, prevention of attacks, building and launching spacecraft, and controlling military and civilian satellite systems.
In 2003 the senior command of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces had watched keenly as the US military sliced through Iraq’s half-a-million-strong army using satellites to target troops, equipment and buildings precisely. By the time the US ground forces rolled in, Iraq’s army was in no shape to resist.
Analysts noted that during the Second World War, 4,500 air sorties had been required to drop 9,000 bombs to destroy a railway bridge. In Vietnam the figure was 190 bombs; in Kosovo it required only one to three cruise missiles. By the time of the invasion of Iraq, a single missile guided by satellite could do the job. Moscow realized it had fallen behind the USA’s space-based military assets and set about trying to catch up.
It currently operates the GLONASS global positioning system, which is the Russian equivalent of America’s GPS.
The GLONASS constellation of twenty-four satellites was fully completed in 1995, two years after GPS. To maintain full global coverage requires frequent launches of new satellites to replace those that break down or reach the end of their shelf life. However, in the economic chaos of 1990s Russia, funding for space projects was cut by 80 per cent. By 2001 only six satellites were operating, not enough even to cover Russia. This was a serious blow to Moscow’s strategic interests as GLONASS ensures that its nuclear missiles can find their targets.
After Putin came to power in 2000 the economy began improving, and he made the restoration of the system a top priority, more than doubling its budget. By 2011 it was back to twenty-four satellites, giving global coverage for the first time in a decade. Sanctions complicate Russia’s ability to persuade phone and car manufacturers to enable GLONASS in their products but its military capabilities remain intact and the accuracy of the system is not in question.
The focus on GLONASS demonstrated the military’s concern that it needed the situational awareness and communication reliability that only a satellite-based system can provide. GLONASS was used to support Russia’s military operations in both Syria and Ukraine, which used high-precision weapons. This resulted in Ukrainian hackers targeting GLONASS, but with limited success. As the Kremlin became reliant on these systems it was logical that it would invest in defending them.
It has also invested in its ability to attack its enemies’ satellite systems. A way to do this is by using one of your satellites to get close to someone else’s. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so: for example, to inspect damage caused by debris. But you might also want to grab hold of it, blind it with a liquid substance or even fire at it. On several occasions the USA has made official complaints that Russian satellites were “stalking” American ones. In 2020 US Space Command was concerned to see Russia’s Cosmos 2542 satellite release another satellite from inside it. Instead of staying close to other Russian satellites, 2543 then approached an American military reconnaissance vehicle. More alarming still, it went on to fire a high-velocity projectile into outer space.
As this event indicates, Russia is building a range of options to give it war-fighting capabilities in space. Some of them are dual-use facilities that allow plausible deniability of military intent; others are justified as being deterrents to prevent war.
As well as using satellites as weapons, Russia and other countries are working on land-based weapons to fire into space. The 2021 ASAT test firing is one of a string of examples showing that Russia, aware that it cannot match the USA militarily in space, seeks to demonstrate its ability to disable or destroy its adversary’s core equipment. The obsolete satellite it blew up was one of its largest. There were many others it could have selected that would have produced far less debris. It chose to send a message. From the Kremlin’s perspective this is a rational insurance policy.
The same applies to a project to launch a rocket into space from underneath a modified MiG-31 fighter jet already flying at supersonic speed. The rocket is then thought to be able to release a small satellite, possibly one capable of firing a weapon.
One weapon already operational is the Peresvet laser system, designed to counter satellites. These are truck-mounted devices deployed with five of Russia’s mobile intercontinental ballistic missile divisions in order to target foreign satellites as they pass over Russian territory and prevent them from tracking the units’ movements. It’s unclear if they can “dazzle” or “blind.” Dazzling means swamping a satellite with so much light it temporarily loses sight of what it’s trying to see. Blinding permanently damages a satellite’s imaging system. It’s not known if any of the five units have used them successfully.
Most analysts believe that Peresvet can only dazzle, but the authoritative online magazine Space Review suggests Russia is ready to step up a gear with a new system known as Kalina. An in-depth investigation in 2022 looked at Google Earth images and open-source patent documents and found that Russia’s Krona space surveillance complex was working on a state-of-the-art laser system with the ability to destroy a satellite.
The Krona complex, atop a 2-kilometre-high hill, is based just west of the town of Zelenchukskaya, near the border with Georgia. New ground has been broken and a dome designed to house a telescope has appeared. According to Space Review, technical documents for the tender to construct it describe a building able “to operate in temperatures ranging from +40 to −40°C and withstand magnitude-7 earthquakes.” The dome consists of two sections that can be opened in less than ten minutes, allowing the telescope to scan the entire sky.
The building is connected via a tunnel to another which houses a Lidar (light detection and ranging) machine. The Lidar pulses light towards a satellite and then measures how long it takes for each pulse to return. This gives it an indication of the satellite’s position, speed and the direction in which it’s travelling. The more sophisticated the equipment, the more accurate the reading.
If Kalina is operational, at this point it would begin to focus and fire. The laser beam must pass through Earth’s atmosphere and so needs to be powerful. The more light it delivers, the more damage it can do. Most observation satellites operate just a few hundred kilometres up, in low Earth orbit. It’s thought Kalina will be able to lock onto and track a satellite for minutes at a time, and either dazzle or blind it during these periods. Space Review estimates that the system could enable Russia to shield from view about 100,000 square kilometres of its territory at any one time – an area bigger than Portugal.
Kalina would also be able to select a spot on the satellite and focus all of the laser beam’s energy on it. This could burn out the machine’s cameras or its engines, rendering it useless. Lasers with this much energy are thousands of times more powerful than those used to play CDs or in surgery, and Kalina can ensure that multiple beams fired from a telescope with a diameter of several metres travel in parallel with each other and so don’t spread out. If it works, Kalina can probably take out satellites as high up as geostationary orbit.
If deployed, their use can be denied. The laser beam is invisible, there’s no loud bang as it’s fired, and no plume of smoke afterwards. “What’s that?” says Moscow. “Lasers? Act of war? Nothing to do with us. Have you tried North Korea?”
Now imagine such weapons being fired from space. Not into space, but from space. Without any atmosphere to deflect or weaken the beam, the weapon could be much smaller and the target bigger – a space station, for example.
Kalina is among the new generation of systems that have been dubbed Putin’s superoruzhie or “super weapons.” They include hypersonic missiles that have the ability to change direction and altitude while travelling in Earth’s atmosphere. This would make it difficult for the target country to know where a missile is headed and prepare accordingly.
Since 2018, Russia’s military efforts in space have been closely linked with China’s in a bid to undermine US space superiority and threaten its infrastructure. The relationship began in the early 1990s. Sanctions on various technologies had been imposed on China following the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Russia had emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, and so Beijing and Moscow slowly began to cooperate on space policy.
By 2018 they were ready for a formal agreement to cooperate on a range of projects including rocket engines, space planes, satellite navigation and monitoring space debris (but, as we’ve seen, the last is not necessarily as benign as it sounds because if you have a monitoring system you also potentially have a spying system).
This, and the advancement of space-related weapons, is why the USA and the Europeans have for years been suspicious of joint Russian–Chinese proposals for a new treaty to prevent a space arms race. The texts of drafts put forward in 2008 and 2014 are still being discussed and are notable for what is missing.
The texts may be peppered with references to “peaceful purposes” and “arms control,” but, like all other proposals and agreements so far, they do not define what constitutes a weapon in outer space, nor detail any limitations on how close one nation’s satellites can be to another’s. More seriously for the Americans is the lack of clarity on the developing, testing or stockpiling of ground-based anti-satellite weapons such as Kalina. This suits Moscow and Beijing. They know they are behind the USA in conventional warfare ability, and that modern conventional warfare relies on satellites. Therefore they are not interested in banning the weapons that could shoot at those satellites from Earth.
As we’ve seen, the USA has proposed a worldwide ban on “direct-ascent” anti-satellite weapons, which can cause space debris, and has called for a more encompassing treaty to address the new issues brought by new technology. But it’s difficult to see how a consensus is going to be reached, especially as the Americans are developing their own ground-launched weapons and other technologies.
A more likely scenario is that Russia and China will continue to develop their relationship with initiatives such as their plan to build an International Lunar Research Station “on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon” by 2035.
As part of various transfers of technological know-how, the two countries have been working to make Russia’s GLONASS and China’s BeiDou satellite navigation systems compatible with each other. This means that if one country went to war with a third party and its communication and observation system was damaged, it could use the services of the other.
It sounds like win-win, but … Putin … we have a problem.
Russia is the junior partner in this relationship and Russia doesn’t want to be the junior partner in anything. Moscow has the history, the legends and the medals to show it. But Beijing has the money and the infrastructure, and it’s not playing catch-up any more. The old cliché that Chinese space technology is re-engineered Russian space technology is well out of date. China is the one with its own space station now, not Russia. China has landed a craft on the far side of the Moon, not Russia. It’s also ahead on technology for heavy-lift reusable rockets, and its space-related private sector is more vibrant.
Russia needs China more than the other way round, which means that Beijing can afford to be cautious when it comes to helping Moscow. The Chinese are reluctant to supply Russia with technology due to economic sanctions – if doing so would trigger sanctions against China as well.
Despite Chinese hesitancy in their “friendship,” the relationship is useful to Russia. After pulling out of the ISS, the only place to have cosmonauts in space for a long period of time will be on board the Chinese space station. Without China, Russia would not be able to afford to build its own base on the Moon. The partnership allows Russia to try to compete as a major space power and allows China to buy oil and gas at “partnership” prices. Behind the deal lies the joint strategy of building an alternative power bloc to the American-led loose coalition of democracies, and then persuading other countries to join them. But when it comes to Russia’s space programme – that’s an offer most can refuse.
Russia was once cutting-edge; now it’s being cut out. There’s also an element of cutting itself off. New laws mean that any Russian media outlet that reports even basic information about the country’s space industry must add a disclaimer to the article/tweet/post reading: “This Report (Material) has been created or distributed by Foreign Mass Media Channels executing the functions of a Foreign Agent, and/or a Russian legal entity executing the functions of a Foreign Agent.” Declaring yourself a “foreign agent” has never been a good idea in Russia at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.
The Russian public, which still has a keen interest in space, will be denied information on almost everything about it except the most asinine government-approved particulars. A 2019 opinion poll found that 31 per cent of Russians closely follow news about space. Some 59 per cent wanted the country to maintain its stellar efforts, and 53 per cent believe it will.
And it’s clear that, despite its decline, Moscow is making plans to stay in the top league.
Russia’s new crown jewel is its most modern space-launch facility: the Vostochnii Cosmodrome. In 1991, post-Soviet Russia did not have a major spaceport on its territory and had to pay Kazakhstan for the privilege of launching from Baikonur. It was determined to remedy this embarrassing situation and the Kremlin has bet on Vostochnii as the answer. It intends to develop strategic autonomy by breaking with the Soviet past and ensuring that all the major components of its military and civilian space projects are based within its borders.
Construction began in 2007 in Amur Oblast in Russia’s Far East. It’s about 8,000 kilometres from Moscow and 200 kilometres from the border with China. The nearest city is Blagoveshchensk (population 200,000), which sits on the northern side of the River Amur. It’s a typically drab former Soviet municipality from where inhabitants can see the shiny new Chinese city of Heihe, with its neon lights blazing across the river from modern high-rise apartments and office blocks. Fifty years ago, Heihe was a sleepy village; now it hosts 250,000 people and stands as a reminder of how China has overtaken Russia.
That’s where Vostochnii comes in. The cosmodrome project is intended to have an economic knock-on effect across Amur Oblast, which is one of Russia’s most underdeveloped and isolated regions. It was chosen for both economic and geographical reasons. It’s on the site of a former intercontinental ballistic missile base and so has access to existing main railway lines. Its remote location reduces the risk of rocket debris hitting any large urban centre, and the latitude means rockets can carry almost the weight of those launched from Baikonur. It is situated near part of the Trans-Siberian Highway, which supports the infrastructure required for such a massive project involving the creation of a new city for 35,000 people.
Vostochnii was built over budget and behind schedule, and was plagued by the endemic corruption that dogs all Russian industry. President Putin, who takes a keen interest in the misappropriation of state funds, has reminded senior politicians that Vostochnii is “practically a national project. But no, they keep stealing in hundreds of millions!” At least $170 million was looted by top officials, dozens of whom were arrested and jailed.
Rockets are now being launched from the site, but completion of several smaller projects may take at least another decade so there’s plenty of time to steal more money. A plaque at the site’s main entrance declares: “The path to the stars begins here.” Well, no one would dare have added “(unless the money runs out).”
The ambition is there, but the finance, the equipment and possibly the expertise required to match the American and Chinese space programmes may not be. Despite this, several other long-term projects are currently under way.
A reusable two-stage rocket is planned to launch from Vostochnii by 2026. Named Amur, it looks suspiciously similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 but is smaller and will only be able to carry 10.5 tonnes of cargo. That’s an upgrade on Soyuz 2 rockets, but still less than half of what Falcon 9s can take up.
The designs for a new space station named the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) are complete, but the target for having it in orbit has slipped from 2025 to 2028, and some Russian experts are talking about 2030. Given that it took nearly two decades for Russia to design, build, launch and attach its Nauka laboratory module to the ISS, even that seems optimistic. Nauka was supposed to be in service in 2007 but first docked in 2021. If it is built, ROSS will be smaller than the ISS and only inhabited for four months a year, limiting the amount of research cosmonauts can do.
There are also plans to build a “space tug” that will get an uncrewed spaceship to Jupiter (via the Moon and Venus) in just over four years. It will feature laser weapons and a 500-kilowatt nuclear reactor to power its electric engines. Named Zeus, its first mission is to launch in 2030. A mock-up of the craft displayed at the 2021 Moscow air show looked like a giant Meccano set and had similar flying potential, but if the technology does get off the ground, then four years to Jupiter is feasible, as would be a two-year crewed round trip to Mars.
A space station, a reusable rocket, a space tug – it’s an impressive list. Now all they need to do is find the funds, scientists and equipment to take it off a list and into space.
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was losing revenue from its space activities – as we’ve seen, it was facing increasing competition for its cosmic taxi service. Given that it was charging $70 million dollars per passenger to get foreign astronauts to the ISS, that severely dented the revenue stream. America is also phasing out buying Russian-produced rocket engines and purchasing made-in-USA versions.
Russia doesn’t publish the budget for its military space programme, but open-source reporting suggests it is in the region of $1.5 billion a year. Roskosmos funding has been cut to about $3 billion a year, with almost nothing earmarked for research and development. By comparison, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope project alone cost $10 billion, NASA’s annual budget runs at about $25 billion, and US government spending on military space activities hit $26.3 billion for 2023. China spends far less, in the region of $10 billion, but appears to be committed to increasing that.
What’s more, Russia’s space programme is plagued with systemic problems, riddled with corruption and, aside from the Vostochnii Cosmodrome, relies on an obsolete infrastructure, some of which is beyond the country’s borders. Domestic private enterprise is reluctant to invest in a high-risk, state-dominated industry, which it knows is being squeezed by sanctions.
Add to this an ageing population. A large proportion of the experienced Russian workforce is approaching retirement and so the industry will require at least 100,000 highly trained specialists to replace them this decade. However, talented young Russian engineers and scientists are not attracted to an industry that pays less than other high-tech ventures.
With increased sanctions hitting the Russian economy and making it difficult to source materials, Roskosmos will struggle to compete. Russia will not rest, nor accept secondary space power status, but without the means to stay in the top tier of space exploration and scientific investigation it will settle for top-tier military applications.
The necessity of cooperation is what kept the airlocks open between the Russian and American space communities even when the state-to-state relationship was broken. Routes to détente are not always easy to find, but there’s one shining so brightly that we can see it with the naked eye as it passes overhead every ninety minutes travelling at 7.6 kilometres a second – the ISS.
However, the geography of space is not immune to the geopolitics of Earth. The détente of the Soyuz–Apollo docking, and of the ISS, is now lost in the space between us.
Linked from Russian spaceflight news