Roscosmos

The State Corporation for Space Activities "Roscosmos", commonly known simply as Roscosmos (Russian: Роскосмос), is a state corporation of the Russian Federation responsible for space flights, cosmonautics programs, and aerospace research.

Originating from the Soviet space program founded in the 1950s, Roscosmos emerged following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It initially began as the Russian Space Agency, which was established on 25 February 1992 and restructured in 1999 and 2004 as the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), respectively. In 2015, the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) was merged with the United Rocket and Space Corporation, a government corporation, to re-nationalize the space industry of Russia, leading to Roscosmos in its current form.

Roscosmos is headquartered in Moscow, with its main Mission Control Center in the nearby city of Korolyov, and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center located in Star City in Moscow Oblast. Its launch facilities include Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world's first and largest spaceport, and Vostochny Cosmodrome, which is being built in the Russian Far East in Amur Oblast. Its director since February 2025 is Dmitry Bakanov.

As the main successor to the Soviet space program, Roscosmos' legacy includes the world's first satellite, the first human spaceflight, and the first space station (Salyut). Its current activities include the International Space Station, wherein it is a major partner. On 22 February 2019, Roscosmos announced the construction of its new headquarters in Moscow, the National Space Centre. Its Astronaut Corps is the first in the world's history.

The Soviet space program did not have central executive agencies. Instead, its organizational architecture was multi-centered; it was the design bureaus and the council of designers that had the most say, not the political leadership. The creation of a central agency after the reorganization of the Soviet Union into the Russian Federation was therefore a new development. The Russian Space Agency was formed on 25 February 1992, by a decree of President Yeltsin. Yuri Koptev, who had previously worked with designing Mars landers at NPO Lavochkin, became the agency's first director.

In the early years, the agency suffered from lack of authority as the powerful design bureaus fought to protect their own spheres of operation and to survive. For example, the decision to keep Mir in operation beyond 1999 was not made by the agency, but by the private shareholder board of the Energia design bureau. Another example is that the decision to develop the new Angara rocket was rather a function of Khrunichev's ability to attract resources than a conscious long-term decision by the agency.

The 1990s saw serious financial problems due to the decreased cash flow, which encouraged the space agency to improvise and seek other ways to keep space programs running. This resulted in the agency's leading role in commercial satellite launches and space tourism.^{[citation needed]} Scientific missions, such as interplanetary probes or astronomy missions during these years played a very small role, and although the agency had connections with the Russian aerospace forces, its budget was not part of Russia's defense budget; nevertheless, the agency managed to operate the Mir space station well past its planned lifespan, contributed to the International Space Station, and continued to fly Soyuz and Progress missions.

In 1994, Roscosmos renewed the lease on its Baikonur cosmodrome with the government of Kazakhstan.