History

Milestones of development:

 

1985
The Ministry of General Machine Building of the USSR issued an order to form the Main Department for the creation and use of space technology for the national economy and scientific research - Glavkosmos of the USSR.
1987
Glavkosmos started coordinating international human spaceflight projects under contracts with Interkosmos: cosmonauts flew to the Mir space station.
1991
Glavkosmos signed a contract for developing and delivering a consignment of cryogenic oxygen-hydrogen steps for the Indian GSLV rocket.
2012
Glavkosmos became the main contract integrator for the Russian space companies involved in the Russian-European program "Soyuz at the Guiana Space Center".
2014
First launch of the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle with six satellites (the USA, the UK, Norway and Russia) as a secondary payload.
2016
Glavkosmos became an official distributor of the Earth observation data from the Resurs-P and Kanopus-V satellite constellations.
2016
Glavkosmos became the main subcontractor to provide the launch services for OneWeb program.
2017
Glavkosmos became the operator of the commercial Soyuz-2 launches from the spaceports of Vostochny, Baikonur and Plesetsk.
2017
Glavkosmos established GK Launch Services, JSC, a subsidiary company - operator of commercial launches of the Soyuz-2 family LVs.
2017
For the first time in space history Glavkosmos deployed 72 small satellites into three different orbits.
2019
Glavkosmos started implementing the launch program for OneWeb satellites. The first six satellites were injected into target orbits.
2020
Glavkosmos opened a webstore of space souvenirs.

 

JSC “Glavkosmos” today’s tasks

Coordination of the international projects of ROSCOSMOS State Space Corporation
Coordination of Russian enterprises for Soyuz-ST-B commercial launches in the Guiana Space Center (South America, department of France)
Integrated solutions in creating satellite systems of various application
Launch Services
Provision of Earth observation data from a Russian satellite constellation and services based on them
Projects in manned spaceflights
Export of Russian space equipment
Marketing research and analytics, training

Interesting facts

Glavkosmos took an active part in launches of the Indian satellites. In 1988, the Indian satellite IRS-1A was launched from Baikonur, soon followed by the IRS-2B and IRS-1C satellites.

Interesting facts

In 1991, Glavkosmos signed a contract for the development and delivery of a batch of cryogenic oxygen-hydrogen blocks for the third stage of the Indian GSLV rocket. Later, Glavkosmos also designed and supplied equipment for upgrading the cryogenic test facilities in Mahendragiri (ISRO test facility, India).

Interesting facts

The first truly commercial spaceflight of the Japanese journalist Toyohiro Akiyama was performed under the contract between Glavkosmos and Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS in December of 1990).

Interesting facts

In 1987, Glavkosmos started coordinating international human spaceflight projects under contracts with Interkosmos: the first Syrian cosmonaut Muhammed Faris flew to the Mir space station.

Interesting facts

In 2015 Glavkosmos contributed to the implementation of the contract between KazCosmos and Roscosmos - the first cosmonaut of the independent Kazakhstan Aidyn Aimbetov flew to the International space station (ISS).

Interesting facts

In 2019, Glavkosmos participated in preparation of the mission of Hazzaa Al Mansoori, the first astronaut from UAE, who flew to the International space station (ISS) and safely returned to Earth.

Interesting facts

On July 15, 1975 Soyuz-19 spaceship was lifted aboard Soyuz-U launch vehicle. It was the first international space flight with the docking of Apollo, a US spaceship. The famous Soyuz-Apollo docking was a historical event and a symbol of rapprochement between the two superpowers in the period of detente during the long-lasting Cold War.

Interesting facts

On April 4, 2019, Glavkosmos JSC, under a contract with Arianespace, launched four communication satellites of O3b Networks, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based satellite communications operator SES. The name O3b stands for "Other 3 billions", which refers to the world's population, where broadband Internet is not available right now. Thanks to the O3b satellites, the Internet will come to them.

Interesting facts

Soyuz-2.1a became the first rocket launched from the new Russian space center Vostochny. The historical launch was conducted on April 28, 2016.