It looks very much like a hostage situation. Thirty-six satellites of OneWeb companybased in London and in which the British State is a capital, are currently waiting in the fairing of a Russian Soyuz rocket, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan. They were to take off this Saturday to complete the constellation of 428 satellites already in orbit that OneWeb operates with the aim of developing high-speed Internet everywhere in the world.
“Should” because the outbreak of war in Ukraine is also shaking up the space sector. It suffices, to realize this, to trace the thread of the numerous threats of reprisals – and simply reprisals, more and more – that are launched in a flurry of Roscosmosthe Russian space agency, and its tempestuous director general, Dmitry Rogozin on Twitter.
A disrupted schedule?
OneWeb has just paid the price, with Russia now conditioning the take-off of the 36 satellites on the departure of the British government from the company’s board of directors as well as on legal guarantees that these satellites are not used for military purposes. This Thursday, OneWeb announced suspend all these launches from Baikonur.
Just one example of the upheavals taking place. Christian Maire, associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategy Research (FRS), also recalls the strong links that have existed between the European Union and Russia since 1990, through the Soyuz programme. The Russian rocket is regularly used to send European missions into space. Whether from the Baikonur or Vostotchny cosmodromes (Russia) or from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou (Guyana). Since 1999, 37 flights have been carried out from Russia and 27 from Kourou, counts Christian Maire in a note published on the FRS website.
Not sure there are others. In any case, Roscosmos has just suspended the Soyuz launches planned from Kourou and recalled its technical staff – 87 people – who worked there. Three shootings were planned this year, indicates, in a press release, the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes), the French space agency. Two for the European navigation constellation Galileo and one for French CSO-3 spy satellite. Here are three other programs that the war in Ukraine has put on hold.
Rosalind Franklin will still have to wait?
And what about Rosalind Franklin ? The rover, at the heart of the second part of the ExoMars program, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) but with strong participation from the Russian agency, was due to take off for the red planet in 2018 in search of traces of past life at its surface. Manufacturing delays have already postponed the launch to 2020, then to 2022. It was planned for September, aboard the Russian Proton launcher… from Baikonur. “The very sharp deterioration in relations with Russia makes this launch again unlikely,” ESA said on Monday. A meeting, scheduled for Tuesday and next Wednesday, should decide the fate of this mission and possible alternatives. Olivier Sanguy, editor-in-chief of the space news site of the City of Space in Toulouse, hard to see how the mission could be done without the Russians. “They don’t just provide the launcher to leave Earth, but also scientific instruments on board the rover and especially Kazachok, its landing platform on Mars,” he explains.
Olivier Sanguy could continue the list of tensions already recorded or expected caused by the war in Ukraine, and which are no longer even immune the International Space Station (ISS) [lire encadré]. It’s not surprising that there are so many of them, “so much space is an intertwined world”, he underlines to remind that space players rarely embark on their programs alone.
Russia, not so essential?
In this game of cooperation, Russia plays a significant role. “It is one of the first powers of this very closed club since it masters the full range of missions, both civil and military”, wrote in 2017 Isabelle Sourbès-Verger, geographer specializing in spatial geopolitics at the Alexandre-Koyré Center (CNRS)in an article for review National Defense. Isabelle Sourbès-Verger highlighted in particular “unique skill niches” occupied by Russia. It was in particular its Soyuz spacecraft, the only one to transport astronauts to the ISS at the time.
This ten-year hegemony ended on November 16, 2020, with the first manned flight to the ISS operated by Space X, the American company founded by Elon Musk, with its Falcon 9 launcher and its Crew Dragon capsule. As for Russian rockets, “they don’t have such specificities that would allow them to fulfill missions that no other launcher could do”, indicates Olivier Sanguy. Which underlines in passing that the most powerful launcher in operation to date is Space X’s Falcon Heavy. the least expensive option, he continues. This is what explains this collaboration between ESA and Roscosmos, so much so that Soyuz were launched from Kourou. »
A war that reinforces the quest for spatial autonomy?
Cnes does not seem to be overly concerned about the suspension of Soyuz launches from Guyana. It is that two new launchers must arrive on the market in 2022 on the European side: Vega-C (a lightweight launcher) and especially Ariane 6 (a medium to high power launcher), which is to take over from Ariane 5 and its 112 flights on the clock. These imminent arrivals make it possible to consider “a rescheduling of European institutional launches”, indicated the French space agency on Wednesday.
It is undoubtedly a first consequence of the war in Ukraine that Olivier Sanguy then sees: it reinforces the quest for autonomy and sovereignty of the space agencies in their programs. “It has been a few years since the United States entered into a perspective of mounting their space industrial independence while, for example, its Atlas V launcher uses a Russian engine, he explains. There is this same concern in Europe, to which the arrival of Ariane 6 responds. Since his arrival at the head of ESA [le 1er mars 2021], Joseph Aschbacher is also pushing for the adoption of a future European manned flight programme. A call heard by Emmanuel Macron, who paved the way for the launch of such a program during the European summit dedicated to Space organized in Toulouse in mid-February.
Even the International Space Station (ISS) won by the conflict?
“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station from uncontrolled deorbit? From the beginning of the conflict, Dmitry Rogozin, the boss of Roscosmos, launched a series of angry tweets on the future of the ISS in the perspective of international economic sanctions launched against his country. [Lire notre article du 26 février].
Until then, however, despite these threats, “the ISS seems to have managed to remain neutral ground”, observed Thursday morning Olivier Sanguy. It was without counting without a new press release from Roscosmos the same day, announcing that, from now on, Russia will no longer cooperate with Germany on joint experiments in the Russian segment of the ISS, one of the two parts of the station.
France could also suffer a comparable sanction while “bilateral joint scientific programs, on board the ISS, are still in progress with Russia, in particular in the field of space medicine”, recalled the Cnes in a press release Wednesday.