For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine essentially cut off Russia’s space industry from foreign customers, a Russian rocket lifted off Tuesday and carried satellites into orbit with commercial technology from Western companies.
The payloads from companies based in the United Kingdom and Luxembourg flew on a satellite owned by the United Arab Emirates, which has maintained warmer relations with Russia than Western countries. Although the payloads are small, their presence on Tuesday’s launch is notable after the war in Ukraine, and resulting Western sanctions, effectively led to an embargo against putting US and European space technology on Russian rockets.
UK and European Union sanctions introduced after Russia’s 2022 invasion prevent exporting a wide range of space technology to Russia. Companies from the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other nations have moved their satellites off of Russian rockets, primarily switching them to launch vehicles from SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and India.
The European Space Agency terminated a partnership with Russia on Mars exploration within weeks of the Ukraine invasion.
Russia launched an Angolan communications satellite last year, but that mission was part of an intergovernmental agreement. Russia continues launching US astronauts to the International Space Station through a no-funds-exchanged arrangement with NASA.
The launch Tuesday began with the liftoff of a Soyuz rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in the far eastern part of Russia, at 7:34 am ET (11:34 UTC). The Soyuz booster and its Fregat upper stage successfully delivered a Russian civilian weather satellite into a polar orbit, then deployed 42 secondary payloads, mainly CubeSats from Russian companies and universities.
There were three small foreign satellites on the Soyuz launch manifest. One was from Belarus, a staunch Russian ally, and the others were from the UAE and Malaysia.
“What surprised me about the others is they both have commercial elements with ties to the West,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, a satellite industry analytics and advisory firm.
The mission of the 44-pound (20-kilogram) UAE satellite, named PHI-Demo, is to serve as a host platform for two European technology demonstration experiments. The PHI-Demo spacecraft hosts a 5G communications payload from a Luxembourg company called OQ Technology supporting data transfer and asset monitoring applications. Also on board is an experimental water-powered resistojet thruster developed by the UK company SteamJet Space Systems, which says it specializes in environmentally friendly propulsion that can provide tens of times more thrust than electric propulsion.
The Dubai-based Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, which owns and operates the PHI-Demo spacecraft, said it developed the satellite in partnership with the UAE’s private space sector and research institutions. The UK’s SteamJet and Luxembourg’s OQ Technology secured agreements with UAE officials to place their payloads on the PHI-Demo satellite, while the Emiratis were responsible for selecting the Russian launch vehicle.
Another foreign satellite from Malaysia was also on the Soyuz rocket launch Tuesday. The Malaysian CubeSat is the first spacecraft owned by a company with lofty ambitions named Angkasa-X, which calls itself the “SpaceX of Asia,” to provide broadband Internet coverage for the Asia-Pacific region.
Angkasa-X is backed by Greenpro Capital Corp., a Nasdaq-listed Malaysian business incubator headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and registered in Nevada. Officials from the UAE, SteamJet, OQ Technology, and Malaysia’s Angkasa-X did not respond to questions from Ars.
“An aberration”
The UAE and Malaysian satellite operators booked their rides on the Soyuz launch Tuesday through Russian intermediaries, including a Russian private company called Aerospace Capital and Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. A German company originally involved in brokering rides for international satellites on the Soyuz rocket backed out of the mission.
Russian, UAE, and Malaysian officials did not disclose launch prices for the Soyuz flight. But it’s hard to imagine Russia undercutting SpaceX’s price for a small satellite to ride on one of its Falcon 9 rideshare missions without selling the Soyuz launch service below cost. A 20-kilogram satellite like the UAE’s PHI-Demo mission would have cost $330,000 to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket, according to a price query tool on SpaceX’s website.
One manager from an international launch broker in 2021 said SpaceX’s rideshare launch prices were the “cheapest to date.”
Henry said he’s not seeing any indication of broader acceptance in the commercial satellite industry of resuming launches on Russian rockets.
“What I suspect is that companies who have chosen to launch on Soyuz after Russia's invasion of Ukraine will find that this action sours interest from customers and investors across large swaths of the world, especially in Europe and the US,” Henry said. “The recent Soyuz launch strikes me as more an aberration than a trend, but it's too early to say.”
