Roscosmos (the State Corporation for Space Activities) manages Russia's civil space program and much of its space industry from Moscow, flying Soyuz crews to the Russian segment of the International Space Station.[1] Established as the Russian Space Agency on February 25, 1992, after the Soviet Union dissolved, and reorganized as a state corporation in 2015, it inherited the infrastructure, design bureaus, and launch sites of the Soviet space program.[1]

The ISS partnership is one of the few areas where Russian-American cooperation has continued since 2022; in July 2026 Roscosmos and NASA agreed to keep the station flying through 2030.[2] Its robotic program has struggled: the Luna 25 lander crashed into the Moon in 2023, and follow-on missions have slipped to the late 2020s. Under director general Dmitry Bakanov, appointed in February 2025, Roscosmos is planning a national successor to the ISS, the Russian Orbital Station, with a first module targeted for 2028.[3]

Soviet heritage

Roscosmos descends from the program that opened the Space Age. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957, and Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961.[1] Valentina Tereshkova followed as the first woman in orbit in 1963, and Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk in 1965. These milestones defined the early Space Race with the United States.

Soviet robotic probes achieved the first soft landing on the Moon (Luna 9, 1966), the first lunar sample return by a robot (Luna 16, 1970), and the first landings on Venus.[1] After losing the race to a crewed lunar landing, the program concentrated on space stations, flying the Salyut series from 1971 and the modular Mir station from 1986 to 2001, where physician Valery Polyakov logged a still-unbroken 437-day single flight. The R-7 missile lineage that launched Sputnik evolved into the Soyuz rocket family, which has flown more than 1,900 times, more than any other orbital launcher.[4]

Soyuz and the ISS partnership

Russia was a founding partner of the International Space Station and launched its first element, the Zarya module, in November 1998. Roscosmos supplies crew transport on Soyuz spacecraft, cargo on Progress freighters, and the propulsion used to maintain the station's orbit. Between 2011 and 2020, Soyuz was the only vehicle carrying any nation's astronauts to the station.

Russian crews continue to set endurance marks: cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko ended his fifth flight in September 2024 having accumulated a record 1,111 days in space, more than any human in history.[5] Launches use the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which Russia leases under an agreement running to 2050,[6] while military and polar-orbit missions fly from Plesetsk and the newer Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East handles a growing share of civil launches.[4]

Soyuz crew rotations have continued, though not without incident. When Soyuz MS-28 lifted off in November 2025 carrying cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, a service platform at Baikonur's Site 31 collapsed during the launch, and the next Progress cargo flight had to wait for repairs that were finished in March 2026.[7] Soyuz MS-29 launched from the restored pad on July 14, 2026, carrying Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina, and NASA's Anil Menon on an eight-month expedition,[8] and the MS-28 crew landed in Kazakhstan on July 26, 2026, after 241 days in orbit.[9]

The ISS partnership has outlasted the collapse in wider relations that followed Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. NASA and Roscosmos continue to exchange seats, flying cosmonauts on American Commercial Crew Program capsules and NASA astronauts on Soyuz, and in July 2025 the two agencies agreed to extend station cooperation to 2028.[10] Meeting at Baikonur for the MS-29 launch in July 2026, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman and Bakanov went further: the station will operate through 2030, and the no-cost seat exchange continues for its remaining years.[2] Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev flew on SpaceX's Crew-12 mission in February 2026,[11] and Sergey Teteryatnikov is assigned to Crew-13, targeted for September 2026.[12]

Roscosmos has stated that its new national station will initially be assembled while attached to the ISS Russian segment and separated before the complex is brought down; by early 2026 it had decided that the Nauka laboratory module will detach with the departing cluster rather than sink with the rest of the station.[13] A Russian Academy of Sciences official went further in December 2025, saying six Russian modules, including Nauka and the Prichal docking node, could be reused as the new station's foundation.[14] RKK Energia's general designer, Vladimir Solovyov, cautioned in April 2026 that assembling the new station at the ISS depends heavily on American decisions about the outpost's final years.[15]

Luna 25 and robotic exploration

Luna 25, Russia's first lunar mission since Luna 24 in 1976, launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on August 10, 2023. Nine days later, an engine burn intended to lower its orbit ran long, and the spacecraft struck the lunar surface; Roscosmos confirmed the loss on August 20, 2023.[16] The agency's investigation traced the failure to an onboard control unit that left an accelerometer switched off, which allowed the braking burn to run for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84.[17] The failure removed Russia from the race to make the first landing near the lunar south pole, which India's Chandrayaan-3 accomplished days later.

The follow-on missions of the Luna-Glob program have been repeatedly delayed. The Russian Academy of Sciences moved the Luna 26 polar orbiter to 2028,[18] and Luna 27, now split into two landers targeting the south and north poles, is planned for 2029 and 2030.[19] Cooperation with Europe on planetary missions ended in 2022, when the European Space Agency suspended Russian participation in the ExoMars rover mission.[20] Roscosmos has instead aligned its lunar plans with China's CNSA under the International Lunar Research Station initiative, a planned joint lunar base.[1]

Launch vehicles

Roscosmos flies the Soyuz-2 as its workhorse rocket, is phasing out the Proton-M in favor of the Angara family, and flew the first test of the new medium-lift Soyuz-5 in April 2026.[23]

RocketStatusRole
Soyuz-2ActiveCrew, cargo, and satellite workhorse
Proton-MBeing phased outHeavy payloads to high orbits
Angara 1.2 / A5ActiveLight and heavy military and civil payloads
Soyuz-5 (Irtysh)First test flight April 2026Medium-lift replacement, flown from Baikonur
AmurIn developmentReusable methane-fueled Soyuz-2 successor

The Angara family, developed to replace Proton with an all-Russian rocket flown from Russian territory, launches from Plesetsk and, since April 2024, from Vostochny. An Angara A5 placed the military satellites Cosmos 2589 and Cosmos 2590 into high orbits from Plesetsk in June 2025,[21] and an Angara 1.2 flew a further military mission in April 2026.[22]

The new medium-lift Soyuz-5, a joint project with Kazakhstan, made a successful first test launch from Baikonur on April 30, 2026, flying a suborbital profile with a mass simulator.[23] The rocket is sized for about 17 tonnes to low Earth orbit, and Roscosmos describes its RD-171MV first-stage engine as the world's most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engine.[24] The corporation plans a second launch in the second half of 2027 and a third in 2028.[25] A reusable methane-fueled rocket, Amur, remains in early development.

Current state and plans

Sanctions and the loss of Western customers after 2022 sharply reduced Roscosmos's commercial launch business. Russia made 17 orbital launch attempts in each of 2024 and 2025, against 181 by the United States and 92 by China in 2025, a fraction of its Soviet-era cadence,[26] and it logged 11 launches in 2026 through early August, including the Soyuz-5 test.[22] The corporation's near-term priorities are maintaining its ISS obligations, restoring the lunar program, and fielding new hardware: Soyuz-5, the next Angara variants, and the new-generation Orel crew spacecraft (also designated PTK NP), which Roscosmos says will fly for the first time in 2028 and eventually replace Soyuz.[27]

The centerpiece of its post-ISS planning is the Russian Orbital Station (ROS). In December 2025 the government dropped an earlier near-polar concept and announced that the station will fly in the same 51.6 degree inclination orbit as the ISS, easing the transition between the two outposts, and in April 2026 the station's chief designer at RKK Energia laid out a schedule that launches the first module in 2028 and completes deployment by 2034.[3] Roscosmos has put the project's budget at 608.9 billion rubles, about 7.3 billion US dollars.[28]

References

  1. What is the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities? - The Planetary Society.
  2. Russia Agrees to ISS Operations, Seat-Swaps, Through 2030 - SpacePolicyOnline, July 2026.
  3. Russian Orbital Station to be fully deployed by 2034 - ROS chief designer - TASS, April 2026.
  4. Roscosmos - Wikipedia.
  5. NASA Astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, Crewmates Return from Space Station - NASA, September 2024.
  6. Russia, Kazakhstan extend Baikonur cosmodrome lease to 2050 - Space Daily, 2004.
  7. Russia Completes Repairs to Site 31, Next Cargo Launch on March 22 - SpacePolicyOnline, March 2026.
  8. Soyuz Docks to Station, Hatches Open Soon for Crew Greeting - NASA, July 14, 2026.
  9. Expedition 74 Trio Returns to Earth Inside Soyuz - NASA, July 26, 2026.
  10. Russia's Roscosmos, NASA agree to extend ISS operations until 2028 - France 24, July 2025.
  11. NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 Secured in Spacecraft - NASA, February 2026.
  12. NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 - NASA.
  13. Russian Orbital Station (ROS) - RussianSpaceWeb.
  14. Russia's Plans for a Space Station Includes "Recycling" its ISS Modules - Universe Today.
  15. Russian space station deployment within ISS segment depends on U.S., among other factors - Energia corporation general designer - Interfax, April 2026.
  16. The Russian space agency says its Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon - NPR, August 2023.
  17. Russia blames Luna-25 crash on computer glitch - SpaceNews, October 2023.
  18. Russia Delays Moon and Venus Missions Again - The Moscow Times, August 2025.
  19. Launch of Russia's Luna 27 spacecraft moved to 2029 - Academy member Zelyony - Interfax, August 2025.
  20. ExoMars suspended - European Space Agency, March 2022.
  21. Angara A5 deploys two satellites into high-altitude orbits - Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces blog, June 2025.
  22. Space exploration in 2026 - RussianSpaceWeb.
  23. Russia's new homegrown Soyuz 5 rocket aces debut launch - Space.com, May 2026.
  24. Russia launches new Soyuz-5 rocket from Kazakhstan cosmodrome in first test flight - Euronews, May 2026.
  25. Second launch of Soyuz-5 carrier rocket set for 2027 - TASS, May 2026.
  26. Space Activities in 2025 - Jonathan McDowell, planet4589.org, February 2026.
  27. Russia to roll out new spacecraft to replace Soyuz in 2028 - Roscosmos deputy CEO - TASS, March 2026.
  28. Russia to launch first module of new orbital station in 2028 - Xinhua, September 2025.