Laughing, Putin added, “So I didn’t even make it back and it’s already renamed to Sfera. So I said, well, OK then.” Rogozin confirmed the anecdote on his Telegram channel this week.
Despite the name change, the program only moved slowly forward. According to a Roscosmos press release issued at the beginning of 2022, the Sphere program was hampered by the need for “colossal government spending” on other projects, including dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, just weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine, which has had serious consequences for the country’s ability to invest in a space program.
A paltry sum
Roscosmos said it was spending a little less than $100 million on the program in 2021, and about the same amount in 2022. This hardly seems like enough funding to launch an ambitious satellite program. For example, the OneWeb broadband constellation has fewer than 600 satellites, and it likely cost between $5 billion and $10 billion to get into orbit.
The constellation’s first Internet satellite, Skif-D, launched into orbit in October 2022. It was intended to serve as a testbed to demonstrate capabilities as Russia plans the development of the larger Sphere constellation. It is not clear what the status of other Sphere satellites is, however.
Earlier this month, at the International Astronautical Congress in Azerbaijan, the new leader of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, referenced the Sphere constellation. Now, he said, plans for the constellation will include the capacity to provide direct-to-cell communications, which necessarily means that some of these satellites will be very large.
It seems equally likely that the more ambitious elements of Sphere will, at some point in the future, disappear into the ether.