The Moscow Arbitration Court, when re-considering the claim of Roskosmos for the recovery of 4.7 billion rubles from the RCC Progress. compensation for a faulty satellite partially satisfied the requirements: 2.7 billion rubles were recovered from the Samara enterprise. In 2017, the Resurs-P No. 2 spacecraft manufactured at Progress, which was put into operation two years earlier, failed. According to the specifications, the device was supposed to last five years. It was not possible to repair the satellite, after which Roscosmos excluded Resurs-P No. 2 from the orbital constellation. Experts believe that the court decision will not greatly worsen the financial situation of Progress.
JSC RCC Progress must compensate the state corporation Roscosmos for 2.7 billion rubles. for the faulty Resource-P spacecraft No. 2, follows from the new decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court. With the corresponding lawsuit, Roskosmos filed a lawsuit at the end of 2020. In September 2021, the claim was denied. As follows from the case file in the court’s electronic filing cabinet, in 2017, the Resurs-P No. 2 satellite, manufactured at Progress and put into operation by Roskosmos in 2015, had a malfunction – the absence of a signal from the board when performing the playback mode of the target information by on-board equipment of a high-speed radio link. The state corporation suspended the operation of the spacecraft and handed it over for research to the general designer of Progress (this position is occupied by Ravil Akhmetov). In April 2018, the general designer prepared a conclusion stating that the work carried out as part of the programs to investigate the causes of the malfunction of the spacecraft did not lead to the restoration of operability, the use of the spacecraft for its intended purpose is impossible, despite the fact that the satellite was supposed to serve five years. In October of the same year, Roskosmos excluded Resurs-P No. 2 from the orbital constellation.
• JSC RCC Progress is a leading Russian enterprise and one of the leaders in the global space industry in the development, production and operation of medium-class launch vehicles. Launch vehicles created at the enterprise are used to launch manned and transport spacecraft to the International Space Station, as well as launch foreign payloads. Dmitry Baranov is the General Director of the RCC. Source: website of JSC RCC Progress. According to SPARK-Interfax, the company is owned by JSC United Rocket and Space Corporation of Roscosmos Corporation. There are no financial statements of Progress for the last five years in SPARK-Interfax. After the start of a special military operation, Progress ended up on Western sanctions lists.
In court, representatives of the corporation stated that the Rocket and Space Center had improperly fulfilled its obligations. The development, manufacture, testing, transportation and launch of the Resurs-P No. 2 spacecraft by the Soyuz2-1 b launch vehicle were carried out under six state contracts for a total of 4.7 billion rubles. It was this amount that Roskosmos demanded to be compensated. During the initial consideration of the claim, the court came to the conclusion that the plaintiff did not indicate which specific obligations were not fulfilled or were performed poorly. In addition, within the framework of the state contracts indicated by Roskosmos, the Resurs-P satellite No. 1 was also manufactured, which continues to operate “over its active life”, the requirements of the tactical and technical assignment were fulfilled by 152.44%. In June 2022, the cassation instance ruled that the court did not take into account the arguments of Roskosmos that the purpose of state contracts was to create a space system based on a space complex consisting of three spacecraft, which involved prompt daily receipt of information from all three spacecraft, including “Resurs-P” No. 2, every day for five years. In addition, the court did not investigate the reasons for the impossibility of using the spacecraft for its intended purpose. The Court of Cassation sent the case back for a new trial. The operative part of the decision, which does not contain details, is published on the website of the arbitration court.
According to industrial expert Leonid Khazanov, Candidate of Economic Sciences, the court decision, if it comes into force, is unlikely to provoke a financial crisis in the RCC. “I would not expect the bankruptcy of Progress due to a court decision, since it not only fulfills the orders of Roskosmos, but is also part of it – the corporation is unprofitable for the deterioration in the financial condition of one of its most important enterprises, which can lead to disruption of its space programs. There is a duality of the situation here: on the one hand, Roskosmos must provide Progress with orders to maintain its stable work and workforce, on the other hand, sue it because of a broken satellite.