The Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Energia Space Rocket Corporation signed a state contract on working out the conceptual design of a future national orbital station, according to materials posted on the government’s procurement website on Thursday.
“The general contractor shall undertake on an assignment from the customer to carry out R&D work titled: ‘Creating the Russian Orbital Station’s Space Complex,’” the state contract says.
The work under the state contract is required to be completed on March 31, 2024. The contract is worth almost 2.69 billion rubles (about $41 million).
As the Energia Space Rocket Corporation specified to TASS, the work on the future station’s conceptual design is already ongoing. “In April this year, Roscosmos and Energia signed a contract on working out the conceptual design of the Russian Orbital Station’s Space Complex and the Energia staff has already been carrying out work in this area for some time now on an instruction from the Roscosmos chief,” the Energia press office said.
The work on the conceptual designing of a future Russian orbital station will include two stages. The first stage envisages analyzing the scenarios of the target orbit’s deployment and inclination, including the scenario of undocking operational modules of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS).
Specialists have also calculated the cost of delivering 1 kg of cargo, the cost of deploying the station in its initial configuration and transferring space vehicles from the station’s orbit to the near-Moon orbit. This stage is due to be completed by June this year and its results will be examined by the Roscosmos Scientific and Technical Council.
As the technical assignment stipulates, the second stage will last until March 2024. It envisages working out the conceptual design and specifications of the orbital station based on the results of the first designing stage. Specialists will also study the issues of providing the new orbital station with communications, training cosmonauts, supplying medicines, the options of operation in the manned and unmanned modes, the use of robotic systems and other matters.
Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS)
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov announced in April 2021 that the condition of the International Space Station (ISS) left much to be desired and Russia might focus on creating its own orbital outpost. Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation was assigned the task of making the first basic module for a new Russian orbital station ready in 2025. The new module will be based on a research and power unit that was previously intended for launch to the International Space Station in 2024.
The Roscosmos Scientific and Technical Council recommended that the work on creating the technical project of Russia’s new orbital station be included in the 2025 federal space program. In late February this year, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said that it would be hard to simultaneously implement the ISS project and the project of building a new national orbital outpost due to financial constraints. He also said it was necessary to stipulate some “overlapping period” when the ISS and the ROSS would operate simultaneously for some time.
