Space Agency Will Not Allow Russian Firms to Undercut World Launch Prices

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 31 March: Roskosmos [Russian Federal Space Agency] will not allow dumping to develop on the market for launch services, the official spokesman of the Federal Space Agency, Vyacheslav Davidenko, told an ITAR-TASS correspondent today.

“For the last 10 years Russian space industry enterprises have been successfully implementing space projects for foreign customers,” he recalled, stressing that the “cost of launch services provided by Russian rockets on the international market conforms to average world values”.

However, Davidenko said, “there has lately been a tendency amongst Russian enterprises to offer satellite launch services to foreign customers at prices which are substantially lower than those prevailing on the world market”. “Amongst other things,” he explained, “proposals are being made for the multiple launch of foreign satellites using either the Dnepr rocket or not yet completed modifications of this booster rocket. These proposals are premature and require serious preliminary assessment on the part of Roskosmos.”

“In these circumstances, enterprises are asked to hold the necessary consultations with the Federal Space Agency before discussing and agreeing the main terms of contracts to provide launch services to foreign customers and before setting prices,” Davidenko said.

The Dnepr booster rocket is a civilian version of the world’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-20 (SS-18 Satan in the foreign classification). The rocket, which has a launch weight of 211 tonnes, is a highly reliable and inexpensive means of placing payloads with a weight of up to 3.5 tonnes in orbit. The Dnepr can be used to put satellites into highly elliptical orbits or to place spacecraft equipped with boosters on departure trajectories for flights to the moon.

The Russian-Ukrainian joint venture Kosmotras handles marketing of the Dnepr rockets.