Rogozin renews call for Russian lunar exploration, base

Russia's space program suffered a huge set back to a renewed lunar exploration effort with the loss of the Phobos-Grunt sample return mission in 2011. A joint mission with India designed to ferry the ISRO Chandrayaan-2 lunar rover to the Moon's surface was cancelled and the Grunt standard prototype lander was returned to the drawing board. Above, a 2010 notional view of a Grunt descent stage delivering rover to the Moon [Anatoly Zak/RussianSpaceWeb].

MOSCOW, December 17 (RIA Novosti) – Russia should consider farsighted space projects such as building a manned outpost on the moon, a senior Russian defense official said Tuesday.

“We must formulate practical plans from conceptual projects and fantasies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense and space industry.

Rogozin suggested the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the recently launched Future Research Fund (FPI) should work in tandem on developing such projects.

The FPI – patterned on the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – began distributing grants in April to fund farsighted defense projects. The fund will disburse $70 million this year.

“Many organizations are unfortunately stuck in their busy routines and they have no time to stop and think about new projects,” said Rogozin, who made a similar appeal in September last year for a Russian lunar base to reinvigorate the country’s space aspirations.

On Saturday the 140-kilogram Chinese lunar rover Jade Rabbit made the first soft landing of any probe on the moon in nearly four decades. China is the third nation to achieve a soft lunar landing after the US and the Soviet Union.

Related Posts:
A Russian Moon? Dwayne Day, The Space Review (January 28, 2013)
ESA lunar lander axed (November 21, 2012)
Rogozin presses lunar base, Chandrayaan-2 delayed (September 12, 2012)
Soyuz replacement delayed until 2018 - Popovkin (July 19, 2012)
Craters near Lunokhod-1 officially named (July 3, 2012)
Is there money on the Moon?  Joshua E. Keating Foreign Policy (June 21, 2012)
Russian outlines spaceflight plans to 2030 Marcia S. Smith SpacePolicyOnline (April 29, 2012)
Russian Academy plans Lunokhod-3 and 4 (April 9, 2012)
Popovkin: 'To the Moon in Seven Years?' (February 8, 2012)
"Boy, that sure looks like Luna 9!" (December 3, 2011)

Russia outlines spaceflight plans to 2030

Marcia S. Smith
SpacePolicyOnline

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, has posted its long term plans for human and robotic spaceflight on its website.  The plan outlines Russia's space goals through 2030.

The document is in Russian, but Anatoly Zak of Russianspaceweb.com provides a summary of its key points in English along with his analysis of their feasibility.

Read the article, HERE.

Russia Watch: A new direction in Space

Slow and steady, by choice and necessity because of chronic impoverishment, Vladimir Putin's last week as President of the Russian Federation seemed lacking in the spectacular.

Not so in Space, however, as strong signals emerged indicating Russia was straining for a new direction, perhaps even its own "vision," maintaining her well-earned reputation as pioneering and experienced in space exploration. Uncharacteristic of the late, unlamented Soviet Union, were mixed signals also, and no shortage of what seems to be some odd ideas from certain circles and other ideas unusual in reasonableness.

Unmistakeably, however, something new is happening, as any veteran Russia watcher would tell you. As Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today as summed up this morning, thereby saving me the trouble of chronicling the same list, suddenly new pronouncements are coming from Moscow turning heads not just in Foggy Bottom but also among the world's space watchers.

Perhaps someone in the shuffling bureaucracy, as Putin ends his presidency and assumes the Prime Ministership, dispatched a message telling comrades, old and new, "celebrate," and celebrate loudly, for it may seem unseemly Ames Research Center seems to be showing more of a tribute to Yuri Gagarin than Russia!

In the past few days Roscosmos first called upon our fellow international partners to extend commitments to the International Space Station another five years, through 2020; for it will take this long, they indicated, for Russians to complete their segment of the last phases of the station's construction, and another $5 Billion (US) beyond "availability" to fulfill present commitments.

Among other mixed messages were an announcements Baikonur, where Gagarin and Korolov and Laika and Sputnik made spectacular history over fifty years of Volvo-like dependable launches, might be given up in accord with wishes widely expressed by Kazakhstan, perhaps to unstall long-stalled negotiations it's former satellite nation suddenly to begin anew. If so, it worked. Novosti announces the vast spent booster and space debris filled Steppes may not be abandoned after all, at least before 2050.

It was also reported Roscosmos might be getting out of the Space Tourist business, as well, only to be followed by denials. It now appears this won't be happening, at least until 2010.

However bleak their short term plans may seem, like the United States, also confronting ambitious programs channeled by a "pay as you go" reality, Roscosmos seems to be embracing a new vision beyond mere self-continuity, but constrained to "the Out Years," in budgetary terms.

As a new memorial to Laika was unveiled, Roscosmos strained past ISS toward announced ambitions for a orbiting interplanetary construction platform, "sometime after 2020" and presumably coincident with U.S. plans to return permanently to the Moon.

From that platform, about which little else is known other than an idea, monkeys as well as men may be dispatched to Mars.

And finally, new boosters, after a long period of dependence of tried and true but outdated vehicles, appear to be the clearest part of a new period when Russia and its space industry seem determined to join Japan, a fast but steady China, an equally determined United States and advancing Europe, in reclaiming its glory in space.

Somethings is up, if only the Russian gaze, trained once again on tomorrow, and beyond the rugged present.

Putin creates Rocket & Space Industry Research & Test Center

I'm not sure what the Cyrillic acronym equivalent might be, but...

Центр ракеты и исследования и испытания индустрии космоса

RIA Novosti

President Putin has signed a decree establishing a federal government-sponsored Rocket and Space Industry Research and Test Center, the Kremlin press service said on Friday.

It said the center would be created by reorganizing the Scientific and Research Institute of Chemical Engineering, which will be merged with the Scientific and Research Institute of Chemical and Construction Machine Manufacturing.

The president instructed the government to report on the decree's implementation within nine months and to submit proposals on the center's official registration and inclusion into the list of strategic enterprises and strategic joint stock companies.

A presidential decree takes effect the day it is signed.