has had to put advertising on its rockets

Heir to the Soviet glories that they put the first man in spacethe Russian space program is going through its lowest hours today. Although the space agency Roscosmos continues to announce grandiose projects, such as its own space station and a base on the Moon, the reality hides an industry drowning in debt. The solution?

Turn rockets into billboards. In the midst of this systemic crisis, compounded by the loss of international partners since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin just approved a modification of the law that will allow, as of January 1, 2026, advertising to be placed on space vehicles, including Soyuz rockets and spacecraft.

As Roscosmos tells it, the goal is “to create a mechanism to attract private investment to Russian space exploration and reduce the burden on the state budget.” A measure that comes at a critical moment due to the drop in launches against the United States, which launches almost everything that is put into orbit thanks to SpaceX, and China, which is a hotbed of projects.

The SOS of an old glory. This decision is not a surprise. It is the culmination of a crisis that has been brewing for years and that the war has only accelerated. International sanctions removed Russia from the global market and dynamited key alliances, such as those it had with the European Space Agency. But the main problem is internal, and comes from afar.

In August, RSC Energia, the legendary manufacturer of the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, launched a message of brutal honesty that contrasts with the official triumphalism of the Kremlin. Its general director, Igor Maltsev, admitted that the company that took Yuri Gagarin into space is in a “critical situation”, drowned by “multimillion-dollar debts” and with key projects unfulfilled. Just like we had in XatakaMaltsev went so far as to claim that only “a miracle” could save the corporation.

An old trick for new problems. The idea of ​​putting advertisements on rockets is not innovative: Russia itself was a pioneer. In 2000, a Proton-K rocket carrying the Zvezda module for the International Space Station sported a huge Pizza Hut logo in exchange for a million dollars. That was an anecdote, a marketing curiosity at the dawn of space commercialization. Today, for Russia, it is a necessity.

It is true that rockets usually carry logos of clients and suppliers, or even commemorative designslike the one that celebrated the 60th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. But this is different. The new law seeks to institutionalize commercial advertising as a source of regular income. In fact, already in 2023 Russia had begun to study the interest of large banks and insurance companies.

The question is whether it will work. The space advertising market has never really taken off, and it is difficult for Russia to be the place where it does so today, especially when the advertisers will be Russian companies or companies from allied countries so as not to violate sanctions. Whatever money can be raised, perhaps a few million dollars, seems like a Band-Aid for a massive hemorrhage.

In the end, this plan is the confirmation of a harsh reality: the historic Russian space industry is fighting for its survival. Russia already threatened to leave the International Space Station to set up its own space station and in the end had to back out. The heir to a power that sent the first probes to the Moon, that landed on Venus, that launched the first man and the first woman, cannot finance her stay in low orbit.

Image | Roscosmos

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