Russia&CIS

A senior official from the Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, has indicated that Russia is open to discussions with the United States regarding Russia’s role in the Artemis lunar programme – in particular the Lunar Gateway mission – within the framework of NASA’s proposed Artemis Accords.

The TsNIIMash rocket and spacecraft scientific center has confirmed the destruction in the earth’s orbit of tanks of the Russian Fregat-SB upper stage, the press service of Roscosmos space agency told TASS on Sunday, 10 May 2020.

Yevgeny Mikrin, the head of Russia's human spaceflight program, has died, the country's space agency Roscosmos announced on 5 May 2020. The statement did not specify a cause of death, but a report in Space.com indicates Mikrin had tested positive for Covid-19 last month.

This week’s Space Café WebTalk took place on 28 April 2020, featuring Daniel Porras, Space Security Fellow at UNIDIR - the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research in Geneva - in conversation with Torsten Kriening, co-publisher of SpaceWatch.Global and COO of ThorGroup GmbH.

Headlines have again been made by a state testing a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) weapon system. Russia’s flight test of its Nudol missile technology (which some claim is more for missile defence) falls into a wider and longer-term pattern of DA-ASAT weapons testing and development which has seen the United States, China, and India conduct similar flights over the last 15 years.

This week’s Space Café WebTalk took place on 21 April 2020, featuring Dr. Brian Weeden, Director of Program Planning for Secure World Foundation in conversation with Torsten Kriening, co-publisher of SpaceWatch.Global and COO of ThorGroup GmbH.

On 6 April 2020, US President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources. This order addresses US policy regarding the recovery and use of resources in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies. Over the next …

This essay was originally published by the Eurasia Daily Monitor of  The Jamestown Foundation on 8 April 2020, and is republished here with their kind permission. The original essay can be found here.

Russia reportedly tested its A-235 PL-19 Nudol direct-ascent antisatellite (ASAT) weapon system on 15 April 2020, according to U.S. Space Command and independent observers.

Belarus and Russia have signed an agreement to jointly build a constellation of eight high-resolution Earth observation satellites, according to Belarusian and Russian news media sources.