Dmitry Rogozin’s firing will not save the Russian space program

The news that Dmitry Rogozin had been dismissed as director of Roscosmos, the state corporation that runs the Russian space program, was universally acclaimed in Western space policy circles. Rogozin’s history of making bellicose statements concerning Russia’s space partners has been a sore point even before his tenure at Roscosmos. However, his departure will not save the Russian space program from the systemic problems afflicting it.

That Rogozin was prone to undiplomatic statements became apparent in 2014 when, in the wake of economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Crimea, he threatened Western access to the International Space Station (ISS), which were hitching rides on Russia’s Soyuz rocket. Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister in charge of space and defense for the Russian Federation, suggested that NASA might need to access the ISS with a trampoline if the West did not back off on sanctions. Rogozin had personally been a target of those sanctions.

The threat turned out to be a hollow one. However, the trampoline remark came back to haunt Rogozin in 2020 when, finally, the NASA commercial crew program came to fruition and astronauts began flying to and from the ISS on board the SpaceX Crew Dragon, no longer relying on Russia for a ride. The Russian monopoly on access to the orbiting lab was broken. Russia lost a great deal of revenue it had enjoyed because of that monopoly, which had lasted since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

Fast forward to 2022. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West has imposed further sanctions and provided Ukraine with arms, training and money. The war quickly devolved into a bloody quagmire for Russia. Rogozin, by this time having been demoted to being director of Roscosmos, darkly hinted that he might send the ISS crashing into the United States or Europe, given that Russian cosmonauts control aspects of the space station’s propulsion to keep it in orbit.

Apparently, on Rogozin’s orders, the Russian cosmonauts on the ISS allowed themselves to be photographed wearing the colors of two puppet regimes that Russia had carved out of Eastern Ukraine. This blatant use of the space station for propaganda purposes earned a sharp rebuke from NASA.

According to Ars Technica, after a number of belligerent statements, “Rogozin’s behavior seems to be getting worse. The recent actions by Rogozin suggest that he is increasingly unhinged, isolated, desperate, or some combination thereof as rumors about his future circulate.”

Now that Rogozin has been dismissed, the current Deputy Prime Minister for Space and Defense Yuri Borisov has been named his replacement. No one knows what sort of director of Roscosmos Borisov will be. However, it should be noted that practically the moment Rogozin got the boot, NASA and Roscosmos sealed a deal that will have a Russian cosmonaut fly on a Crew Dragon in exchange for an American astronaut flying on a Soyuz. We can at least expect no mean tweets from Borisov and a little more spirit of cooperation from Moscow.

However, a change of leadership at the top of Roscosmos is not going to save the Russian space program from a steady decline. Roscosmos is still beset with inadequate funding, corruption and quality control issues that may be insurmountable, at least in the short to midterm.

One source of the problem is that civil space is not a priority with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Military space is another matter and is of some concern in the West. Like China and the United States, Russia is developing an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, according to the UK Express, designed to evade missile defense systems. In turn, this development has led to calls for the revival of space-based missile defenses as envisioned by President Reagan’s SDI program.

In any case, Putin’s war in Ukraine has foreclosed any major Russian civil space initiative, aside from the ISS partnership. Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire is taking up too many resources. The war has also made Russia a pariah state, barring any new space cooperation with the West. It may well cause Russia to be ejected from the ISS if the carnage continues for too much longer.

Only regime change in Moscow and a change in direction from imperial conquest to economic development will alter the decline of the Russian space program. But when and if that development will ever occur is beyond anyone’s ability to predict.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.