Russian cosmonautics: is there any reason for pride?
Recently, at Habré, debates about the state of affairs, achievements and failures of the national astronautics have not subsided. The heat of these disputes and the arguments used simply require an overview article, the creation of which I submit to your attention.
Unfortunately, we will have to start with non-space themes, since there are three factors that very seriously affect the perception of the state of affairs in the national astronautics, and without taking an amendment to them, in my opinion, it will not be possible to make this review fully.
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At the end of the introduction I will emphasize that this article is a review educational program, and, probably, you will not find much new here. Also, I tried to give a link to each statement, so do not be surprised by the abundance of blue text.
Only two countries, Russia and China, can launch a person into space on their own today. All other countries have their own manned ships absent or in development. Consider in more detail:
Russia: The Soyuz spacecraft of the fourth modification of the TMA-M is successfully used; a fifth modification of the TMA-MS is being prepared, which is expected to be the last. Developed "Perspective Manned Transport System (PPTS) ", the first unmanned launch no earlier than 2017
USA: The Space Shuttle program was closed in 2011, the replacement constellation program was stopped in 2010. The Orion ship , which was part of the Constellation program, was not completely closed, and is under development (the first launch was not earlier 2017 ). There is also a state program for financing privately owned development companies for manned spacecraft ( CCDev ), within which DreamChaser, DragonRider , CST-100 ships are being developed . However, none of them will go to flight earlier than 2017, and NASA buys seats on the "Unions" by June 2017 .
Europe: There is a project CSTS , which was planned to be developed jointly with Russia in the middle of zero, however, a firm contract was not signed. Judging by the fact that CSTS or ACTS, as it began to be called at the end of zero, there is surprisingly little information on the Internet, the project is probably frozen.
China: The Shenzhou spacecraft is operated, in 2007, several photographs of the Shenlong reusable device appeared, but the status of this program is unknown.
India: Project ISRO . The first flight was planned in 2012, then in 2016, and now there are doubts that it will be completed, due to financial difficulties.
Japan: Shuttle "HOPE-X" canceled, disposable apparatus "Fuji" also canceled.
The ISS is a joint project of Russia ( 4 modules , Zarya belongs to the USA), the USA ( 7 modules ), the European Space Agency ( 1 module ), Canada ( Canadarm 2 and Dextre manipulators ), Japan ( 1 module ). Of all countries, only Russia is working on the expansion of the ISS, the “Science” module is preparing for launch in November-December of this year.
Also, China has one orbital station from one Tyangun-1 module. You can also note the private station Bigelow , which is expected no earlier than 2014.
Russia: Progress , 2.3 tons of payload, the most frequent launches. Return shipping is possible , but rarely used.
USA: Dragon , the most promising, it is expected to become manned, 3.3 tons in orbit, 2.5 tons back.
Europe: ATV , 7.6 tons. In orbit, no return.
Japan: HTV , 6 tons. To orbit without refund.
Global satellite navigation systems have only two countries: Russia and the United States. Other countries have no such systems, or are local:
Russia: GLONASS , 24 satellites according to the system plan, 28 are now in orbit, 3 Glonass-Msare being prepared for launch on July 2 not launched due to the RN crash .
USA: GPS , 24 satellites according to plan, 31 in orbit, the most recent one launched in May 2013
Europe: Galileo , 27 + 3 backup satellites according to plan, 4 experimental vehicles are now in orbit, the full system deployment is promised by 2020.
China: Beidou local navigation system. Now working for the Asian region, a global version is expected around 2020.
India: IRNSS , the regional Indian system, 7 satellites according to plan, the first launchis expected to be successful on July 1 of this year.
Japan: QZSS , a system to improve GPS performance, locally for Japan, 4 satellites according to plan (3 according to the original plan), 3 in orbit, the launch of the system is expected to be announced.
Any developed space power has a constellation of satellites that provides state and military needs. These are reconnaissance (species and radar), communications, missile attack warning, meteorology, etc. Unfortunately, due to the abundance of programs, their simple enumeration is not interesting, a detailed story is impossible, and I cannot draw a short comparison across the six countries. Also, due to the secrecy of the military component, in the coming years we are unlikely to know the real characteristics of these satellites. Therefore, it will be necessary to limit ourselves to general phrases that all of the six countries have corresponding orbital groups. As for Russia, the panic topics on thematic forums like “Russia has no weather satellites. Not at all ”in 2004 are gone. We have Earth remote sensing satellites ( Elektro-L , Kanopus-V , Resource-P ), connected ( Strela , Meridian ), reconnaissance ( Condor , Persona ), meteorological ( "Meteor-M" ), SPRN ( "Eye-1" ).
NASA and ESA lead here. The Asian space race between Japan, China and India is taking place in Asia . Japan was in the lead in the 90s, but now China is in the lead. Currently, there is a competition for a soft landing on the moon and the landing of the moon rover. Excellent lists are on the NASA website and on Habré .
Russia: The last successful AMCs were Vegi in 1984 , Phobos in 1988 were partially successful, the ambitious Mars-96 and the memorable Phobos-Grunt ended in failure. Fortunately, modern AMCs are very often built in international cooperation, and our launch vehicles take out AMC as our contribution to the mission, our instruments looked for water on the Moon , and now they are looking for it on Mars . Currently, work is underway on missions to the moon ( "Luna-Glob" , "Luna-Resource" ) and in a joint project with ESA ExoMars
USA: Many successful AMCs, from Voyagers to the most popular Curiosity. From the nearest plans - the mission to study the atmosphere of Mars MAVEN .
Europe: The second place in terms of the number of stations, one of the most interesting is the mission to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko Rosetta . The plans of the mission to the moons of Jupiter EJSM (with the participation of NASA and Roskosmos) and the already mentioned ExoMars.
China: The last success is the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter in 2010, with plans for landing on the moon and a lunar rover, the Chang'e-3 mission.
India: The last success is the lunar orbiter with the Chandrayan-1 impactor in 2008, the plans are the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and the lunar rover brought to the surface of the Lunar Resource.
Japan: The latest success is the Kaguya lunar orbiter (2007), in the plans of the Hayabusa-2 mission (to the asteroid) and BepiColombo (to Mercury).
A very extensive category, it is unlikely to list all the devices. Different countries cooperate, often the devices complement each other, for example, Russia will not have its own Hubble, but it already has one and three more telescopes are planned in those ranges in which Hubble does not see. Among scientific devices there are simple nanosatellites, there are very complex systems, so I’ll focus on the most visible ones:
Russia: The most striking project is, of course, Radioastron , this program is at the forefront of world scientific knowledge. X-ray and gamma-ray Spectrum-RG , ultraviolet Spectr-UV , in the long run millimeter, submillimeter and infrared Millimetron are planned from telescopes. The biological satellites Bion , the last flight of this year , and the Foton physical satellites, the last flight in 2007 , are expected to be launched in 2013-2014 .
USA: The leader in the number of devices. Some telescopes: optical Hubble , infrared Spitzer (2003-2009), recently broken down Kepler for searching exoplanets, X-ray Chandra , Swift gamma-ray bursts.
Europe: Also a significant number of vehicles: the recently completed Herschel , Planck CMB.
China: Managed to find only a joint with the ESA "Double Star" to study the magnetosphere.
India: X-ray experiment "IXAE" (2006), planned to launch X-ray and UV "Astrosat" .
Japan: Infrared Akari , X-ray ASTRO-E2 .
Russia is the leader in this category. For many years, we have the most launches.
Russia: A full-fledged fleet of launch vehicles, mass production, increasing production volumes . Several types of light rockets: Dnepr , Rokot . The family of medium-sized Soyuz missiles with three (one under construction) launch complexes in Russia and one in South America. Heavy "Proton" . The development of the modernized Soyuz 2.1v , Soyuz-2-3 , Soyuz-5 on liquefied natural gas, modular, developed in light and heavy versions, of the Angara rocket , the first stage of which has already successfully flown three times the composition of the Korean rocket KSLV-1 .
USA: The USA has good experience in oxygen-hydrogen engines - the accelerating block “Centaur” , the heavy but expensive “Delta” . But with the oxygen-kerosene engines, the situation is unpleasant - the “workhorse” of the American cosmonautics, “Atlas-V” , is first used by the Russian RD-180 . It is ridiculous - the SBIRS missile attack warning satellite with pretentious bald eagles also runs on a Russian engine. Of course, the United States doesn’t like this situation very much, and they are making serious efforts to get their launch vehicles: Falcon , Antares (again Russian engine, now NK-33 ). You can also note a very interesting launch vehicle “Pegasus” , sorry, it puts only 450 kg into orbit. The second and third place in the number of launches.
Europe: Vega light rocket, medium Soyuz rocket imported from Russia, Ariane-V heavy rocket, fourth in number of launches.
China: A very large family of rockets "The Great March" , very actively developing. It develops a heavy rocket "Great March-5" , the second and third place in the number of launches.
India: Easy “PSLV” , medium “GSLV” , is being developed by “GSLV Mk3” , 2-3 starts per year, try to develop actively.
Japan: “H-IIA” and “H-IIB ”, 2-3 launches per year, little progress is noticeable.
After all the above arguments, I hope you have no doubt that the position of Russia in space exploration can reasonably be proud. Since ESA is a joint project of more than twenty countries, we are firmly in the top three of the first space states (I would give second place: USA, Russia, China) or the top four space agencies (I would give second place: USA, Russia, ESA, China ). I hope this article will serve as a good reference material.
Upd: Today's unsuccessful launch of "Proton" in the article does not change anything. GLONASS has at least 3 more backup satellites. Most likely, the timing of start-ups on Protons will move due to the time it takes to investigate the causes and possible revision, but this does not change the overall situation.
Introduction
Unfortunately, we will have to start with non-space themes, since there are three factors that very seriously affect the perception of the state of affairs in the national astronautics, and without taking an amendment to them, in my opinion, it will not be possible to make this review fully.
- Politics. The year 2011, which was marked by a surge in accidents in the national space program, fell on a period of political exacerbation of the election campaign, and the interested parties made full use of this. The meme about the "Pacific satellite constellation" has already been fought for the second year, and stupid jokes on this memo appear in comments with depressing regularity.
- The specifics of the media. A successful launch is a news on a much smaller scale than an accident. Therefore, a person who is not interested in space specifically, hears about accidents, but is unlikely to hear about success.
- Mental aberration. In the comments to the space articles, that on Habré, that in general on the Runet, there is a very sad aberration - a combination of black-and-white thinking and unrealistic requirements. If we have not made a “shuttle with a range of flight to the moon,” then our work is absolutely bad, and we have nothing good. In the real world it is impossible to be the best everywhere in all parameters, and the presence of flaws does not mean global collapse.
')
At the end of the introduction I will emphasize that this article is a review educational program, and, probably, you will not find much new here. Also, I tried to give a link to each statement, so do not be surprised by the abundance of blue text.
Piloted astronautics
Piloted ships
Only two countries, Russia and China, can launch a person into space on their own today. All other countries have their own manned ships absent or in development. Consider in more detail:
Russia: The Soyuz spacecraft of the fourth modification of the TMA-M is successfully used; a fifth modification of the TMA-MS is being prepared, which is expected to be the last. Developed "Perspective Manned Transport System (PPTS) ", the first unmanned launch no earlier than 2017
USA: The Space Shuttle program was closed in 2011, the replacement constellation program was stopped in 2010. The Orion ship , which was part of the Constellation program, was not completely closed, and is under development (the first launch was not earlier 2017 ). There is also a state program for financing privately owned development companies for manned spacecraft ( CCDev ), within which DreamChaser, DragonRider , CST-100 ships are being developed . However, none of them will go to flight earlier than 2017, and NASA buys seats on the "Unions" by June 2017 .
Europe: There is a project CSTS , which was planned to be developed jointly with Russia in the middle of zero, however, a firm contract was not signed. Judging by the fact that CSTS or ACTS, as it began to be called at the end of zero, there is surprisingly little information on the Internet, the project is probably frozen.
China: The Shenzhou spacecraft is operated, in 2007, several photographs of the Shenlong reusable device appeared, but the status of this program is unknown.
India: Project ISRO . The first flight was planned in 2012, then in 2016, and now there are doubts that it will be completed, due to financial difficulties.
Japan: Shuttle "HOPE-X" canceled, disposable apparatus "Fuji" also canceled.
Orbital stations
The ISS is a joint project of Russia ( 4 modules , Zarya belongs to the USA), the USA ( 7 modules ), the European Space Agency ( 1 module ), Canada ( Canadarm 2 and Dextre manipulators ), Japan ( 1 module ). Of all countries, only Russia is working on the expansion of the ISS, the “Science” module is preparing for launch in November-December of this year.
Also, China has one orbital station from one Tyangun-1 module. You can also note the private station Bigelow , which is expected no earlier than 2014.
ISS Supply Cargo Ships
Russia: Progress , 2.3 tons of payload, the most frequent launches. Return shipping is possible , but rarely used.
USA: Dragon , the most promising, it is expected to become manned, 3.3 tons in orbit, 2.5 tons back.
Europe: ATV , 7.6 tons. In orbit, no return.
Japan: HTV , 6 tons. To orbit without refund.
Applied unmanned space program
Satellite navigation systems
Global satellite navigation systems have only two countries: Russia and the United States. Other countries have no such systems, or are local:
Russia: GLONASS , 24 satellites according to the system plan, 28 are now in orbit, 3 Glonass-Ms
USA: GPS , 24 satellites according to plan, 31 in orbit, the most recent one launched in May 2013
Europe: Galileo , 27 + 3 backup satellites according to plan, 4 experimental vehicles are now in orbit, the full system deployment is promised by 2020.
China: Beidou local navigation system. Now working for the Asian region, a global version is expected around 2020.
India: IRNSS , the regional Indian system, 7 satellites according to plan, the first launch
Japan: QZSS , a system to improve GPS performance, locally for Japan, 4 satellites according to plan (3 according to the original plan), 3 in orbit, the launch of the system is expected to be announced.
Other
Any developed space power has a constellation of satellites that provides state and military needs. These are reconnaissance (species and radar), communications, missile attack warning, meteorology, etc. Unfortunately, due to the abundance of programs, their simple enumeration is not interesting, a detailed story is impossible, and I cannot draw a short comparison across the six countries. Also, due to the secrecy of the military component, in the coming years we are unlikely to know the real characteristics of these satellites. Therefore, it will be necessary to limit ourselves to general phrases that all of the six countries have corresponding orbital groups. As for Russia, the panic topics on thematic forums like “Russia has no weather satellites. Not at all ”in 2004 are gone. We have Earth remote sensing satellites ( Elektro-L , Kanopus-V , Resource-P ), connected ( Strela , Meridian ), reconnaissance ( Condor , Persona ), meteorological ( "Meteor-M" ), SPRN ( "Eye-1" ).
Scientific unmanned cosmonautics
Automatic interplanetary stations
NASA and ESA lead here. The Asian space race between Japan, China and India is taking place in Asia . Japan was in the lead in the 90s, but now China is in the lead. Currently, there is a competition for a soft landing on the moon and the landing of the moon rover. Excellent lists are on the NASA website and on Habré .
Russia: The last successful AMCs were Vegi in 1984 , Phobos in 1988 were partially successful, the ambitious Mars-96 and the memorable Phobos-Grunt ended in failure. Fortunately, modern AMCs are very often built in international cooperation, and our launch vehicles take out AMC as our contribution to the mission, our instruments looked for water on the Moon , and now they are looking for it on Mars . Currently, work is underway on missions to the moon ( "Luna-Glob" , "Luna-Resource" ) and in a joint project with ESA ExoMars
USA: Many successful AMCs, from Voyagers to the most popular Curiosity. From the nearest plans - the mission to study the atmosphere of Mars MAVEN .
Europe: The second place in terms of the number of stations, one of the most interesting is the mission to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko Rosetta . The plans of the mission to the moons of Jupiter EJSM (with the participation of NASA and Roskosmos) and the already mentioned ExoMars.
China: The last success is the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter in 2010, with plans for landing on the moon and a lunar rover, the Chang'e-3 mission.
India: The last success is the lunar orbiter with the Chandrayan-1 impactor in 2008, the plans are the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and the lunar rover brought to the surface of the Lunar Resource.
Japan: The latest success is the Kaguya lunar orbiter (2007), in the plans of the Hayabusa-2 mission (to the asteroid) and BepiColombo (to Mercury).
Scientific devices
A very extensive category, it is unlikely to list all the devices. Different countries cooperate, often the devices complement each other, for example, Russia will not have its own Hubble, but it already has one and three more telescopes are planned in those ranges in which Hubble does not see. Among scientific devices there are simple nanosatellites, there are very complex systems, so I’ll focus on the most visible ones:
Russia: The most striking project is, of course, Radioastron , this program is at the forefront of world scientific knowledge. X-ray and gamma-ray Spectrum-RG , ultraviolet Spectr-UV , in the long run millimeter, submillimeter and infrared Millimetron are planned from telescopes. The biological satellites Bion , the last flight of this year , and the Foton physical satellites, the last flight in 2007 , are expected to be launched in 2013-2014 .
USA: The leader in the number of devices. Some telescopes: optical Hubble , infrared Spitzer (2003-2009), recently broken down Kepler for searching exoplanets, X-ray Chandra , Swift gamma-ray bursts.
Europe: Also a significant number of vehicles: the recently completed Herschel , Planck CMB.
China: Managed to find only a joint with the ESA "Double Star" to study the magnetosphere.
India: X-ray experiment "IXAE" (2006), planned to launch X-ray and UV "Astrosat" .
Japan: Infrared Akari , X-ray ASTRO-E2 .
Removal vehicles
Russia is the leader in this category. For many years, we have the most launches.
Russia: A full-fledged fleet of launch vehicles, mass production, increasing production volumes . Several types of light rockets: Dnepr , Rokot . The family of medium-sized Soyuz missiles with three (one under construction) launch complexes in Russia and one in South America. Heavy "Proton" . The development of the modernized Soyuz 2.1v , Soyuz-2-3 , Soyuz-5 on liquefied natural gas, modular, developed in light and heavy versions, of the Angara rocket , the first stage of which has already successfully flown three times the composition of the Korean rocket KSLV-1 .
USA: The USA has good experience in oxygen-hydrogen engines - the accelerating block “Centaur” , the heavy but expensive “Delta” . But with the oxygen-kerosene engines, the situation is unpleasant - the “workhorse” of the American cosmonautics, “Atlas-V” , is first used by the Russian RD-180 . It is ridiculous - the SBIRS missile attack warning satellite with pretentious bald eagles also runs on a Russian engine. Of course, the United States doesn’t like this situation very much, and they are making serious efforts to get their launch vehicles: Falcon , Antares (again Russian engine, now NK-33 ). You can also note a very interesting launch vehicle “Pegasus” , sorry, it puts only 450 kg into orbit. The second and third place in the number of launches.
Europe: Vega light rocket, medium Soyuz rocket imported from Russia, Ariane-V heavy rocket, fourth in number of launches.
China: A very large family of rockets "The Great March" , very actively developing. It develops a heavy rocket "Great March-5" , the second and third place in the number of launches.
India: Easy “PSLV” , medium “GSLV” , is being developed by “GSLV Mk3” , 2-3 starts per year, try to develop actively.
Japan: “H-IIA” and “H-IIB ”, 2-3 launches per year, little progress is noticeable.
Conclusion
After all the above arguments, I hope you have no doubt that the position of Russia in space exploration can reasonably be proud. Since ESA is a joint project of more than twenty countries, we are firmly in the top three of the first space states (I would give second place: USA, Russia, China) or the top four space agencies (I would give second place: USA, Russia, ESA, China ). I hope this article will serve as a good reference material.
Upd: Today's unsuccessful launch of "Proton" in the article does not change anything. GLONASS has at least 3 more backup satellites. Most likely, the timing of start-ups on Protons will move due to the time it takes to investigate the causes and possible revision, but this does not change the overall situation.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/185106/
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