Russia Confirms It Won't Launch Crewed Lunar Missions for Another Decade

While NASA sends astronauts around the Moon ahead of near-future landing missions and China races to catch up, the once-mighty Soviet space infrastructure has fallen far behind. Russia has admitted it has no plans for manned missions beyond low Earth orbit for the decade. Problems with its launch facilities have also led to a dramatic drop in its rocket launch cadence. It's now launching as many (or as few) orbital rockets a year as the island nation of New Zealand.

The space race between America and the Soviet Union was a major backdrop to the 20th century and a proxy for the economic and military rivalry between those twin superpowers. But since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s and Russia's disastrous invasion of Ukraine, Russia has fallen far behind. Where other countries are looking at building lunar colonies and -generation space stations, Russia is barely able to get astronauts into orbit and has no plans to go beyond it.

As reported by United24, the scientific director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute, Lev Zeleny, recently said that Russia has no plans for manned deep-space or lunar missions over the decade. Although he did talk up the construction of a new orbital station, this was recently revealed to be mostly made up of reused ISS components.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov reported earlier this year that Russia made just 17 orbital launches in 2025. That was the same number it made in 2024 and matches New Zealand's total for the same period. In comparison, the United States and its range of commercial aerospace companies made 181 orbital launches in 2025—up from 145 the year before. China's launches jumped to 91 from 68 in 2024.

Excluding the pandemic years, Russia is at its lowest launch cadence since the early 1960s. This is partly down to reduced funding, with the largest majority of Russia's budget being invested in the ongoing war effort in Ukraine, where it loses over 30,000 soldiers a month and has been reduced to buying ammunition and mercenary soldiers from impoverished North Korea.

Although Russia has some hope of increasing its orbital launch cadence in 2026, it's not off to a good start. With 20 planned launches this year, several have already been delayed due to technical reasons, including damage to its only major manned launch facility at Baikonur.

With Russia's economy stagnating, it's hard to imagine the country becoming a major space launch provider again anytime soon.