According to news on August 16, in the early morning of Thursday local time, the Russian "Progress" cargo spacecraft was successfully launched from the Baikonur Space Launch Site in Kazakhstan, completing the country's ninth orbital launch mission this year. According to this progress, this year may become the year with the fewest rocket launches in Russia since 1961. That year, Yuri Gagarin entered space for the first time, ushering in the era of human space flight.

There are many reasons for this. In recent weeks, Roscosmos's first deputy director Andrei Yelchaninov said in an interview: "We are trying to get out of the financial crisis, which is not easy." He also added, "I want to remind everyone that Roscosmos has lost 180 billion rubles (about 2.1 billion U.S. dollars) due to contract cancellations. This forces us to build a new economic model under severe conditions."

The Russian space industry has been operating at a loss in recent years and may not break even until 2025. Previously, United Launch Alliance (ULA) stopped purchasing RD-180 rocket engines manufactured by NPO Energomash. This change, coupled with declining commercial demand for Russia's Proton and Soyuz rockets, forced the Russian government to subsidize Roscosmos.

Yelchaninov said the companies are currently undergoing financial restructuring, with state subsidies helping to keep them afloat, and now they are opening up new markets and increasing workloads. Asked about the possibility of selling more Russian-made rocket engines to the United States, Yelchaninov responded: "This issue is not on the agenda."

"We have had to move from our traditional partners in Europe and the United States, which we have been working with for many years, to new international markets, including countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia," he said.

Yelchaninov confirmed in the interview that Russia has pledged to remain involved in the International Space Station program "at least" until 2028. NASA is pushing to extend the service life of the International Space Station until 2030, when the United States plans to use a modified Crew Dragon spacecraft to deorbit the aging space station.

He also said that Russia's space program will focus more on cooperation with China rather than competition. He said: "The key project of our bilateral cooperation is to build an international lunar station, and we are working together to attract more international partners."

In addition, Russia continues to promote the "Russian Orbital Space Station" (ROS) project that has been postponed many times. The current plan is to launch the science and power modules in 2027, launch all four core modules into orbit in 2030, and continue to expand the space station in the early 2030s. However, these dates can only be considered targets for now.

Yelchaninov also mentioned a number of future rocket projects, including the Amur-LNG launch vehicle and the Corona rocket.

In 2020, Russia plans to launch the Amur-LNG launch vehicle using methane fuel by 2026, with a reusable first-stage booster. The rocket is being developed to compete cost-effectively with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Yelchaninov said that Roscosmos intends to develop a reusable first-stage booster in two stages. The first phase will be a test of landing technology similar to the SpaceX "Grasshopper" plan, and then the experiment of the complete booster. However, the debut of the Amur-LNG launch vehicle may not come soon. Yelchaninov revealed that Russian and Kazakhstan officials are still in the stage of designing the Baikonur launch site recovery platform and have not started actual construction.

He also said that the Russian Federal Space Agency hopes to develop a single-stage orbital rocket called "Corona" in the future. This appears to be an update to a Russian rocket design that is more than 30 years old.

"We have studied whether there is a demand for this new booster," Yelchaninov said. "The answer is obvious. We will reduce the cost of access to space by more than an order of magnitude, open up new opportunities for ultra-fast delivery of cargo, and move towards the concept of 'space as a service'."

However, it may be too early to expect the Corona rocket to fly anytime soon.