SpaceX, rivals get a lift as industry shuns Russian Soyuz rocket in the wake of Ukraine invasion, sanctions
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Arianespace are racing to replace Russia’s Soyuz, the most-launched rocket in history, after Western countries were cut off
- Soyuz’s commercial prospects have been diminished since cutting off OneWeb, an internet satellite company partially owned by the UK
Russia’s Soyuz rocket has carried people and payloads to space for decades, a workhorse that has amassed a record of reliability as the most launched in space flight history.
Yet in the span of a few weeks, the Soyuz’s prospects have been severely diminished in the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine. The nation’s moves to rework commercial contracts, halt deliveries and effectively seize property from Western customers has shaken the industry’s faith in Russia and its signature rocket.
“The Russian government just killed the commercial potential of Soyuz,” said Caleb Henry, a senior analyst at Quilty Analytics, a research and advisory firm. “Russia’s action threatens to permanently remove Soyuz from the list of globally used launch vehicles.”
Rocket Lab said it’s already assessing options to speed its newest rocket to market to fill the gap left by Soyuz. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp, signed a deal to provide launch services later this year for OneWeb, a high-profile satellite operator partially owned by the UK government that has used the Soyuz.
Arianespace, which marketed and launched the Soyuz commercially as Europe’s medium-lift rocket, can shift Soyuz customers to its Ariane 6 rocket in 2023, chief executive officer Stephan Israel said Tuesday at the Satellite 2022 conference in Washington.
Central role
The Soyuz, built by Russia’s state space enterprise, Roscosmos, has made almost 2,000 flights since its 1966 introduction, and its role in space launches has become even more central in recent years. Europe adopted the rocket as its medium-lift launch vehicle in 2011. The retirement of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Space Shuttle that same year meant that Soyuz was the only way for US astronauts to reach the International Space Station for almost a decade until SpaceX began offering another option.
