Necessity, the Mother of Humility

Roscosmos, the Russian state-owned space corporation and overseer of all Russian Federation space flights, cosmonautics programs, and aerospace research, has indicated it may be willing to return 36 communication satellites Moscow pilfered from OneWeb, the London-based satellite communication company. In exchange for its munificence, Roscosmos seeks to take possession of Soyuz rocket parts currently being held in French Guiana.

The 36 purloined satellites—the combined worth of which exceeds $230-million—were to have departed the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Roscosmos Soyuz-2.1b rocket in March 2022. However, following the dissolution of international niceties in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin issued an ultimatum denying OneWeb permission to launch until the company guaranteed its satellites would not be put to military use. Russian officials further demanded the British Government sell its stake in OneWeb.

OneWeb refused, canceling its launches and evacuating its staff from Baikonur.

Making good on its threat, Russia seized OneWeb’s 36 satellites and—as if to punctuate the extent and earnestness of its ire—relegated OneWeb CEO Neil Masterson to its own sanctions list.

Doubling down on self-defeating petulance, Roscosmos thereafter suspended cooperation with the European Space Agency on Soyuz rocket flights from French Guiana, and hastily withdrew 87 of its employees from the South American launch site. In keeping with well-established if not cliché axioms pertaining to haste and waste, the departing Russians failed to gather up numerous and difficult-to-replace Soyuz rocket components—components now firmly in the possession of Arianespace, the French orbital launch service provider.

Russian Space Web wrote of the fiasco: “On orders from Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, dozens of Russian specialists were abruptly withdrawn from French Guiana in early March 2022, leaving behind the rocket stages, containers with propellant, support hardware and documentation. The Paris-based Arianespace company, which contracted Roscosmos to provide and support Soyuz launches with European and most non-Russian commercial payloads, took custody of the stored equipment until its expected return to Russia. However, due to the severe breakdown in diplomatic relations and economic activities between Europe and Moscow, the Russian hardware remained in French Guiana for the rest of 2022.”

Comes now January 2023, and OneWeb has forged new partnerships with SpaceX and India’s space agency by which to deliver its remaining satellites to orbit. Subject satellites, however, remain languishing in the custody of their Russian abductors.

Roscosmos, conversely, is scrambling to meet its commitment to launch a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2023 for purpose of retrieving crew-members stranded thereupon when Soyuz MS-22—which transported cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS on 21 September 2022—was struck by a micrometeorite and sprang a coolant-leak while docked to the storied orbital facility.

That Roscosmos has found itself in sudden and urgent need of Soyuz components is not inconceivable; nor is the notion that such need could precipitate discussions with Arianespace and OneWeb to barter three-dozen ill-begotten communication satellites for Soyuz giblets.

In July 2022, leadership of Roscosmos passed from fervent nationalist and inveterate hot-head Dmitry Rogozin to Yuri Borisov, a Russian politician, former military strategist, and mathematician whose curriculum vitae speaks more to temperance and diplomacy than to cuff-shooting and saber-rattling. Mr. Borisov served as Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister from 2018 to 2022, and as the nation’s Deputy Minister of Defense from 2012 to 2018. Also, Borisov is a recipient of the Order for Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR, third-degree.

In the wake of Rogozin’s departure from Roscosmos via the impetus of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s boot, the space agency may well recast itself after Borisov’s more diplomatic fashion. The veracity of that supposition stands to be plumbed over the coming days as Roscosmos, NASA, and Arianespace endeavor to set aside their political and ideological differences and pursue means by which to safeguard the Russian, American, and Japanese personnel currently aboard the International Space Station.

FMI: www.nasa.gov