KALININGRAD, Moscow, 29 June. At mission control, all eyes are on the screens. A dot of light creeps across a giant map of the world, curving over Africa, the Middle East, then edging into Russia. The orbiting Mir space station is over home territory again. Another screen flickers into action, and soon the Atlantis space shuttle appears against a backdrop of clouds. Minutes later, somewhere above Siberia, Atlantis has docked with Mir. There is a flurry of applause and hand shaking, as officials talk of a “quantum leap” and a “new world”. It is, they say, the beginning of a new era of cooperation in space.
This new era is scheduled to bring another six shuttle dockings as a prelude to the debut of the international space station Alpha in 1997. And Russia will bring invaluable experience to the project – during the fiercely competitive era of the Cold War, the thriving Soviet space programme launched a stream of space stations. But the industry’s fortunes have slumped dramatically over the past decade. As rivalry with the US faded into history and the Soviet Union broke up, a tottering economy brought cutbacks and sweeping redundancies for Russia’s space industry, leaving the future uncertain.
Against this gloomy background, Mir is one of the glittering successes of the Russian space programme. The space station have been almost permanently crewed since its launch in 1986, and has played host to 49 space travellers – 32 Russian cosmonauts and 17 visitors from other nations. But Mir, which has already been orbiting for three years longer than planned, is beginning to show its age. “One of the major difficulties on Mir at the moment is the lack of electricity,” says Sergei Gromov, a spokesman for RSC Energiya, the recently privatised company responsible for Mir’s design. As the solar panels which provide its electrical power degrade, their output has dropped by 4 to 8 per cent each year. From time to time Mir has been so short of power that the lights have been turned out and radios silenced in order to make the most of what little there is.
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Communication blackouts
The station has also become cluttered with equipment, hampering work on experiments and making even simple housekeeping difficult. Communication between cosmonauts and ground controllers is another problem area. When not directly above a ground station, Mir can use satellites to beam transmissions back to Russian stations. But setting up every link involves aligning Mir’s communications antenna to an accuracy of half a degree. “The total mass of this antenna is about 60 kilograms – about the same as a domestic refrigerator – so this is very difficult to do,” says Gromov. In addition, high charges for the satellite links have forced Mir’s controllers to be selective about when they use them. Sometimes Mir has relied solely on Russian ground stations, and the cosmonauts have been out of contact for at least an hour on each 92 minute orbit.
The Russians hope to keep Mir going for at least another two years. A $400 million US contract has covered some of the costs – for training US astronauts for Mir, and constructing additional solar panels, for instance. In 1997, the last of the planned shuttle flights to Mir will take up a prototype of a miniature power station, known as a “solar dynamic system”, which was developed in Russia and the US for Alpha. Instead of using photovoltaic cells to charge batteries – which on Mir has been time-consuming to maintain – the device will focus sunlight onto a boiler that generates vapour to drive a turbine generator, giving a continuous supply of electricity. The station may then operate for another year or so with the dynamic system attached; after that, it is likely that Mir will be retired.
By that time, the assembly of Alpha should be under way. When completed, the new space station will be more spacious than a jumbo jet. RSC Energiya has already had the go-ahead to build a 20-tonne automated space station that will form the first part of Alpha. Financed mainly by NASA, it is scheduled for launch in 1997. The Russian module will provide electrical power from solar generators and control the position of the growing Alpha complex as construction starts.
Alpha takes shape
In April 1998, Russia will launch a service module for Alpha. It will have living space similar to that on Mir, and a docking port for Russian Progress craft to deliver supplies and equipment. A Soyuz craft will be joined on in May 1998 to serve as a lifeboat, providing an escape route in case of emergency. By this time, most of the US modules will be in place. European and Japanese assembly flights are due to begin in early 1999. Eventually, the station will have a permanent crew of six.
The plans are agreed, more or less. But maintaining its place in the space arena will be an uphill struggle for Russia. In February, the head of the space subcommittee in the Russian parliament said that the space programme would have to stop completely within two years if new sources of money were not found quickly. “We were really very concerned,” says Albert Galeev, director of Moscow’s Space Research Institute. The heads of the design bureau and the Russian Space Agency thought it was “quite a possibility”, he says.
The threat has haunted the industry since the dismantling of the Soviet Union. In 1992, the Russian parliament discussed axing all space activities, which some saw as a costly drain on resources at a time when rebuilding the economy was the priority. Instead, the government decided to set up the Russian Space Agency to streamline the bureaucratic system of organising space ventures that had grown up under the Ministry of General Machine Building. The RSA’s mission was to come up with a programme geared to the needs of “consumers” such as space scientists and the users of communication satellites. In a dramatic rethink, the RSA outlined plans to cut space activities by two-thirds; the 600 000-strong workforce of the Russian space industry has already halved to around 300 000 today.
One casualty of the cuts was the Russian space shuttle, Buran. In the early 1970s, when NASA’s shuttle was still in the pipeline, Buran was not far behind, according to Alexander Medvedtchikov, deputy director-general of the RSA. In design and size, Buran is very similar to NASA’s shuttle. But Buran differs from the shuttle in being designed to fly without a crew, if necessary, and in not having reusable rocket engines.
Buran was to be launched on the back of the Energiya rocket, the most powerful rocket in the world. More than a thousand Soviet enterprises got busy on the project, which cost 17 billion roubles (about £12 billion at that time), according to Medvedtchikov. And the technology is awesome. Standing as high as a 13-storey building, an Energiya rocket can lift into orbit a payload of 100 tonnes – more massive than the entire Mir space station. Buran took its first, uncrewed test flight in 1988. All went well, but the Russian shuttle never flew again – there simply wasn’t the money to continue the project.
Redundant rockets
Now the Energiya rockets lie redundant under blankets of dust at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and no one knows whether they will ever be used. “It was a very efficient system with superb technology,” says Medvedtchikov, “but unfortunately it was a bit ahead of its time.” And with Buran out of the running, no one has any need to launch the colossal payloads that Energiya was designed for.
Medvedtchikov hopes that the Energiya project could be revived one day, possibly as a means of disposing of nuclear waste. If dangerous radioactive isotopes could be jettisoned beyond the orbit of Mars or into the Sun, then a programme of around 30 Energiya launches per year could keep the planet clear of nuclear waste. According to Medvedtchikov, the idea is being discussed internationally. But even if scientists agree that the idea is feasible and safe, there would almost certainly be opposition from environmentalists, who are unlikely to be easily convinced that launching up to 100 tonnes of highly radioactive waste into space is for the best.
The money for such projects may never become available, but there is certainly no shortage of enthusiasm within the Russian industry. Medvedtchikov himself hopes that multinational space projects will thrive in the wake of a successful Alpha project. The world could unite, he believes, to take on crewed missions to Mars and to use space technology to improve humanity’s lot – by harvesting solar energy in space, for example, or averting asteroid strikes, as well as dumping all our radioactive waste. “These issues can only be solved together,” he says.
But for now, such grandiose schemes are no more than a dream, and financial problems are leaving many of Russia’s space science projects hanging in the balance. Over the past decade, the Space Research Institute has had great success with spacecraft such as Relict I, which sought out ripples in the cosmic background radiation, and Granat, which has beamed back magnificent views of the centre of our Galaxy. And until last year, the institute managed to make ends meet, despite cuts in funding and an annual inflation rate that has touched 1000 per cent. “In 1992 and 1993 we were more or less OK,” says Galeev. “We were getting funds which were sufficient to do our job. But in 1994, we were in very bad shape.” The institute found itself with a 30 per cent shortfall because parliament failed to come up with funds. Finally, the government allocated some new sources of money, and the institute received the outstanding 7 billion roubles (about £1 million at current rates) in May this year.
Waiting game
The funding problems, combined with a shortage of launchers, has led to long delays on many projects. One of these is Interball, a family of four satellites for studying how charged particles streaming out from the Sun interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere. The project was originally due for launch in 1990, and has gradually slipped back. But Galeev is confident that the first pair of satellites will be launched next week, on 3 August. If all goes well, the second pair will be launched early next year.
Also delayed are two high-profile Mars missions, one to map the planet’s surface and the other to take a detailed look at its atmosphere, magnetic field and geology. The Mars projects involve around 20 nations and were both originally planned for launch in 1994. Now they are scheduled for 1996 and 1998.
Some other projects are on hold indefinitely. The Spectrum-X-Gamma spacecraft, which will carry equipment from more than a dozen countries, should have been launched later this year. The craft is equipped to capture the most detailed pictures yet of some of the Universe’s most intriguing gamma and X-ray sources. The project has been shelved for the moment, and a 1997 launch is up for discussion. Relict II, designed to study the ripples in the microwave background with the most sensitive instruments available, is ready to launch. But money for the launch just isn’t there and no one knows when it will go ahead. Galeev says that these delays are bound to make foreign partners nervous about Russia’s ability to deliver.
The immediate future does not look any brighter. “The situation cannot improve easily,” says Galeev. The conflict in Chechnya is a significant additional drain on government funds, he says. “I believe that it affects the funding in general, although the government says it doesn’t.” As for Mir, Medvedtchikov says there has been enough money to keep the space station active and well supplied until now, and that there are adequate funds at the moment. He is confident that funding will not dry up if in future the government can possibly help it. “It’s not because they don’t want to give money to the space industry; it’s because they can’t,” he says.
Russia’s space effort is also impeded by squabbles with other former Soviet republics that are home to key installations that the Russians use. The Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where the space age began with the launch of the first satellite, is used for launching the spacecraft that service Mir. There have been disputes since the fall of the Soviet Union as to who gets access and who pays for maintenance.
Kazakhstan now demands rent of $115 million per year – a hefty payout for the struggling Russian economy, but still a cheaper option than building a new cosmodrome. And Gromov says that keeping staff at Baikonur all year round is difficult. The climate swings from hot desert summers to harsh winters that often bring more than 20 feet of snow. The local water supply is highly polluted, and no one wants to foot the bill for cleaning it to drinking standard.
Sorting out the cosmodrome’ problems will be a priority as Alpha takes shape. And despite the financial uncertainty that plagues the industry, Medvedtchikov says that there is good reason to welcome the new era. The rewards of collaboration could be great – no single country can muster the finance to take on a project like Alpha alone, and success would score valuable political points. “If we combine our efforts, we really believe that we can do something important,” he says.
Galeev too is keen to build on past successes. “During the Soviet era, of course, it was more difficult to have a close relationship with our colleagues abroad,” he says. “It took some time to understand each other, and to know how we can work together.” Today the relationship is easier. “In spite of the lack of funding, it is nice to work with colleagues abroad and feel that we are representing one team,” says Galeev. “We are not really eager to turn back.”