The domestic space industry should radically change the approaches to the creation of orbital vehicles, says the head of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov. How are Russian satellites arranged today, what are their disadvantages compared to foreign competitors, and how are satellites proposed to be changed?The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, said that the Sphere project to create a multi-satellite orbital system requires Russia to switch to new technical principles for the creation and management of space groupings.
Sphere is a giant state project to create hundreds of multifunctional satellites for various purposes. [...]
Borisov has already spoken on this topic before. In particular, it was said that "Roscosmos is heavily indebted to the Russian economy. Today it is impossible to imagine the modern world without space services. This includes digital television, communications, data transmission, navigation, weather information, cartography, knowledge of the Earth's surface, emergency analysis, and so on. Today it is simply impossible to imagine one or another sphere of our economy without space services."
The head of Roscosmos recognized the domestic lag in this area. According to him, the Americans, Europeans and Chinese – the main players in this market – "have overtaken us in this regard for a long time," and "Roscosmos needs to restructure its work so as to learn how to produce satellites in a completely different quantity. This will require a radical restructuring of the main processes of the technological cycle – development, production, testing, an increase in the terms of active existence..."
Behind these statements is a radical change in the entire concept of satellite production in Russia.
Six-six-sixIn Soviet times, there were many different variations of the rule of creating a spacecraft – "six-six-six".
The weight is six tons, the price is six million, the creation period is six years. This is a joke in which you do not need to look for real data, but the principles here are very clear. The spacecraft needs to be made for a long time, it should be a large "combine" with many different instruments and tools, and the price should be appropriate so that it is enough for all the structures working on the project.
A similar principle was adhered to until about the end of the last century and the United States, represented by NASA and military structures. Large spacecraft, not very frequent launches, but the ability to stick a lot of functions on one satellite. The reasons for this strategy are clear – launches into space are expensive and it is desirable to launch a spacecraft that can do more in one launch, if it takes place. Currently, such spacecraft also remain, among the indicative options – JPSS and Landsat. Such devices carry more fuel and can work longer.
Another reason for such a spacecraft architecture was the reliance on sealed instrument containers. That is, all electronics and most of the devices in the devices of that time were in a sealed volume, usually filled with an inert gas. Frames with onboard equipment and devices that worked in a gas environment were placed inside the containers, this was done largely to prevent overheating and overcooling of the devices.
For example, it was according to this scheme that the Meteor and Resurs spacecraft for remote sensing of the Earth were created. They are based on a sealed tank with a length of almost three meters, a pressure of 100 millimeters of mercury is maintained inside it, the circulation of a nitrogen–based gas mixture is provided by four fans, gas heating is provided by electric heaters, and radiators on the housing are responsible for cooling.
Naturally, this whole system itself is expensive and energy-intensive. The desire of the developers is also natural: since a spacecraft is already being made on the basis of this platform, it should be stuffed into it as many different devices as possible. Because of this, there were situations when such "combine satellites" had one of the devices interfering with the work of others. Another problem is that accidental ingress of micrometeorite and depressurization of the container led to the loss of the entire expensive apparatus.
Big, but five, small, but threeThe beginning of the new millennium brought with it the miniaturization of electronics, a reduction in energy consumption requirements, and a general reduction in the cost of components.
The overall heat generation has also decreased. It became possible to create open-type spacecraft without using a sealed volume.
Most modern spacecraft do not have a sealed volume. All electronics are installed directly on a thermostabilizing base, inside which pipes with a coolant pass to cool the components. The heat is transferred from the instruments to the radiators, where it is dissipated in space.
All this eventually made it possible to simplify the design of spacecraft and led to the creation of nanosatellites – cubesats. One cubesat unit (1U) is an aluminum case measuring 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters, its weight is about a kilogram. And such spacecraft are now not only student crafts.
For example, the Dove-2 Earth remote sensing satellites owned by Planet Labs have a size of 3U (100 mm × 100 mm × 340 mm). The weight, together with batteries and solar panels, which are opened from the outside of the case, is only 5.8 kilograms. At the same time, such a space "digital camera" shoots extremely decently (3.5 meters per pixel). A small price allowed the company to launch several hundred such spacecraft and provide a survey of the entire surface of the Earth with a daily update.
But these are still small spacecraft. For better shooting quality and for other purposes, larger satellites are required. And here the ability to put production on stream was shown by SpaceX and Airbus. SpaceX created the Starlink 1 and 1.5 satellites to create the Starlink grouping to provide broadband Internet access, which have been released more than 3,000 pieces since 2019.
200-kilogram satellites and the release of more than three pieces per day. Until recently, it seemed simply unrealistic, but SpaceX has put the production of spacecraft on stream. The ability to launch 64 starlinks at once in one launch of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle allowed the company to create the most massive satellite constellation in the history of mankind.
Airbus has less success so far, but it is also impressive. For the OneWeb project, the Airbus Arrow satellite platform was developed, which also allows the production of several spacecraft per week. Moreover, Airbus Arrow is multifunctional and allows you to build a variety of spacecraft based on the platform: communication satellites, optical observation satellites, radar satellites. All this is on a one-hundred-kilogram platform adapted to launch a large number of devices at once in one launch.
In pursuitCurrently, the first phase of the Russian Sphere project relies on the Skif, Yamal and Express spacecraft, which are responsible for various telecommunications projects.
These are good devices. There is exactly one problem – Russia does not yet have the opportunity to produce hundreds of them a year and is unlikely to. But there are fewer of them, only about two dozen.
But since 2025, it is planned to mass-produce Marathon devices for the Internet of Things and a series of Berkut spacecraft for a variety of tasks on remote sensing of the Earth. And now hundreds of them are needed.
Therefore, Russia has no other way. Only the transition to the in-line production of platforms for spacecraft, the launch of mass production and then the creation of specific satellites or even a family of satellites based on them. As in the case of the "Golden Eagle" – when devices are needed for optical shooting, for high-detail shooting, for radar shooting.
Yes, these spacecraft will have a narrower specialization than when creating satellites for individual projects. But it will be a much more resistant system to the failure of several devices, with the ability to create ready-made services based on it for both enterprises and citizens of the country.
Other advantages of this solution are also obvious – the possibility of mass creation of spacecraft, their unification, the possibility of saturation of industries that now need new satellites like air. But this will only work if a universal platform is created in the near future and its mass, in-line production is established.
Moreover, Roscosmos does not have the opportunity to give the whole process into private hands – it will have to create a platform and control its release independently. No other solutions will help to reduce the backlog in the number of devices.
Mikhail Kotov
