Better news has emerged for Russia's space industry, with the Russian Government pledging an immediate $100 million to pay overdue funds to the International Space Station (ISS) project, and the Khrunichev space-manufacturing concern securing a $36 million loan to support its Proton booster production work.
The new cash for the Russian Space Agency, however, is not expected to be enough to speed the production of the ISS Service Module, the launch of which has been delayed by at least eight months, to December 1998. The delay has forced NASA to find funding to build an interim control module to compensate (Flight International, 22-28 January).
Proton manufacturer Khrunichev has also received a $36 million loan from the International Moscow Bank for its work on the booster, creating up to 100,000 new manufacturing jobs.
Khrunichev, which is part of the ILS International Launch Services group, plans to launch one Proton a month for commercial and national customers and believes that it could earn $1.5 billion by 2000 from the work.
The Proton has 13 geostationary launch contracts (Flight International, 11-17 December, 1996) but the first launch in 1997 of a Tempo 1 communications satellite has been delayed by the failure of the Proton-boosted Mars '96 mission in November.
Source: Flight International
