Russia starts losing commercial space launch market - space sector exec
MOSCOW. May 22 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia has "begun to gradually lose" its commercial space launch market, the chief executive of Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center said in a television program on Friday in comments on the recent abortive mission of a Proton-M rocket.
Andrei Kalinovsky told Russia's Rossiya 24 television that an interdepartmental commission had been appointed to investigate the Proton-M accident and that it included leading space industry experts and was headed by Federal Space Agency chief Igor Komarov.
"We'll have to wait for the findings of this commission," Kalinovsky said.
"The commercial launch market has changed over the past few years. New players have emerged, for example the American company SpaceX. Few people believed that a commercial project would be able to break into the market and create a competitive product, create a carrier [rocket] that's competitive in terms of price and quality. But this has happened and we have to reckon with it," he said.
"It's true that we have reduced our presence in the commercial launch market in recent years. Proton launches have gone down in frequency. And naturally, this is partially the effect of the quality problem. Other problems are delays with launches and pricing," Kalinovsky said.