Russia to Spend About 20bn Dollars on Space Programmes Over 10 Years
Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax-AVN website
Moscow, 26 October: The Russian expenditure for federal space programme implementation and military space exploration in the period until 2015 may amount to nearly 20bn dollars, a source in the Russian aerospace industry told Interfax-Military News Agency today.
“The federal programme scheduled for the period from 2006 till 2015 is worth about R230bn or 8bn dollars. With the addition of expenses for the GLONASS global navigation system, and military space programmes, the country will expectedly have to earmark about 20bn dollars in these 10 years,” the source said.
According to him, apart from the budget, the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) will do its best to find other sources of funding. For instance, it is going to attract over R130bn (4.5bn dollars) of other than budgetary assets into the space programmes in the coming decade.
“The funding of Russian space programmes is expected to grow significantly in 2006. For instance, the Federal Space Agency’s budget will grow by 5-6 billion roubles (175-210 million dollars) as compared to the previous year,” he said.
According to the source, the real sum will be specified during the approval of the federal budget. He recalled that R13.7bn (480m dollars) were earmarked for space exploration in 2004, and 18.3bn (642m dollars) in 2005, and R23bn (807m dollars) are planned to be allocated for the purpose in 2006.
As for commercial space programmes, the money is likely to be spent for acquisition and launch of two manned and four unmanned transport vehicles in the framework of the ISS project. Also, the Meteor-M satellite and the Sterkh international satellite will be launched.
The Russian orbital group of non-military satellites will expectedly number at least 70 spacecraft by 2015. The current figure is 30, and 90 with military satellites included. Russia does not have any weather satellites in orbit, while its first earth remote probe is in tests now.