For three decades, Roscosmos occupied a structurally important position in the international space architecture. Russian Soyuz rockets launched astronauts from ESA, NASA, and JAXA to the ISS. Russian Proton rockets launched commercial satellites for European and American operators. Russian rocket engines — the RD-180 in particular — powered American Atlas V rockets, creating the kind of interdependence that was supposed to make geopolitical conflict too expensive to sustain. That architecture collapsed in 2022, and what remains of Roscosmos in 2026 is a substantially smaller program operating in a substantially different context.
The changes have been structural, not merely political. The loss of European and American commercial launch customers removed a significant revenue stream that had helped sustain Roscosmos through the economically turbulent years after the Soviet collapse. The end of deep scientific cooperation on the ISS reduced the technical exchange that had kept Russian human spaceflight practice current. The departure of OneWeb from Soyuz launches, after 36 satellites had already been manifested, left a manifest gap that Russian vehicles have not fully replaced with domestic customers.
Soyuz: still flying, differently
The Soyuz spacecraft itself continues to operate, and that is more significant than it might appear. Soyuz has been flying humans to orbit since 1967 in various configurations. The current Soyuz MS series is a mature, reliable human-rated system, and Roscosmos continues to use it for ISS crew rotation. The cadence has changed: where previously Soyuz flew both Russian and American/European crew on a roughly six-month alternating schedule, now Russian seats on the station are primarily used by Russian cosmonauts, with occasional commercial or partnership arrangements.
What Roscosmos does not have is a successor to Soyuz that has crossed the threshold from development to operational readiness. The Federation spacecraft, renamed Oryol (Eagle) in 2019, has been in development for well over a decade. It is designed to carry up to four cosmonauts, to be reusable, and to eventually serve as the crew vehicle for Russia's stated ambitions at the Moon and beyond. But Oryol has not yet flown, funding has been uncertain, and schedule estimates have been revised multiple times. The gap between ambition and hardware is wider than official announcements acknowledge.
GLONASS and the satellite gap
Russia's GLONASS satellite navigation system — the Soviet-era constellation rebuilt in the 2000s to compete with GPS — has experienced constellation health problems in recent years. At full operational capability, GLONASS requires 24 satellites in medium Earth orbit. The constellation has periodically dropped below full coverage levels as aging satellites have failed and replacement launches have not kept pace. Russian technology sanctions have complicated access to certain electronics components used in satellite manufacturing, and domestic production has not fully compensated.
Military reconnaissance satellites, electronic intelligence systems, and communications satellites for military use have received priority access to launch capacity. That prioritization has come at the direct expense of science missions, Earth observation for civilian use, and the deep space program that once put probes to Mars, Venus, and the outer solar system.
Luna-25 and the science program
Russia's first lunar mission since the Soviet era, Luna-25, reached the Moon in August 2023 after a 47-year gap in the program. It crashed on approach, entering a non-nominal orbit during pre-landing maneuvers and impacting the lunar surface. Coming days before India's Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed at the lunar south pole, the failure was symbolically significant — a juxtaposition that illustrated how the relative positions of national space programs have shifted since the 1960s.
Plans for Luna-26, 27, and 28 — an orbiter, lander, and sample return mission, respectively — remain in the Russian space program roadmap. Whether they fly on anything resembling their planned schedules depends on factors that extend well beyond the technical: funding, access to components, and the broader geopolitical environment. ESA was originally partnered with Roscosmos on the Luna-27 mission; that partnership ended with sanctions, and the mission's viability without European components and expertise is an open question.
What remains
It is a mistake to write off Russian space capability entirely. Roscosmos still employs experienced engineers. The Soyuz and Proton vehicles remain functional. The GLONASS constellation, degraded as it is, continues to provide navigation services. The ISS segment operated by Russia continues to function.
What has changed is the trajectory. Russian space ambitions in the 2010s — a new crewed spacecraft, a return to the Moon, Mars exploration — were ambitious but not unreasonable given the country's historical competence and stated funding commitments. In 2026, those ambitions remain stated but the funding and international partnerships that would have supported them are substantially diminished. The program is not in collapse. It is in contraction, executing on a narrower set of objectives with a smaller international footprint, waiting — like much of Russia's technical establishment — for conditions that may or may not improve.
