Russian Space Research Gasping for Breath

As Moscow gears up for the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight on April 12 amid a number of ambitious new space initiatives, some in the space research community are feeling left out:

The modernisation pushed by President Dmitry Medvedev has prompted a flurry of investment into the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, and cutting-edge industries such as nanotechnology are benefiting from high level backing.

But efforts to recreate the commercial successes of Silicon Valley in Russia risk leaving many space programmes earthbound due to lack of funding.

It’s a seemingly strange conflict of priorities since, as Professor Vadim Gushin of Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems points out, space technology is by definition innovative.

But his involvement in multi-national efforts to improve the physical and emotional well-being of cosmonauts has shown that space research does not feature prominently on Medvedev’s much-touted innovation agenda.

He’s right. Space research is not a big priority. Russia is focused on other areas, including two new rocket boosters, a successor for the Soyuz spacecraft, a new spaceport in the Far East, and its first interplanetary probe in 15 years. The new boosters and spaceport are, in part, to eliminate the country’s dependence upon foreign countries for space capabilities, a situation that resulted from the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.