Putin Endorses Merger of Roscosmos and URSC

Moscow, Russia, January 21, 2015-- Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal to merge Roscomos and the United Rocket and Space Corporation into a single state-run company, which will also be called Roscosmos according to Russian news agency TASS.

The current Director-General of the United Rocket and Space Corporation, Igor Komarov, will be heading the new company.

“I think that’s a correct proposal considering the fat this is more than just a separate enterprise and, in addition, not more than just a separate branch of industry,” Putin said at a meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “The rocket and space industry integrates a huge number of aspects of science and manufacturing,” he added.

Putin said on his part that the space industry faced a diversity of tasks both in the field of national defense and in commercial space exploration. “So I think in this case, like in the situation with the nuclear power industry, a set of instruments of this kind would be quite appropriate but we need a specialized law on it,” he said.

The United Rocket and Space Corporation, which is fully owned by the Russian government, was set up by a presidential decree December 2, 2013, and registered March 5, 2014. Its sphere of competences embraced research, development, maintenance, and recycling of military hardware, engine missiles and their components, as well as design, construction, and launching of space probes, manned and unmanned spacecraft, orbital and interplanetary stations.

Igor Komarov was appointed Director-General of the United Rocket and Space Corporation in March 2014. Prior to that he had had the position of a Deputy Director General of Roscosmos. Before transition to the space industry, Komarov was CEO of Russia’s largest manufacturer of economy-class small cars, AvtoVAZ.

The Russian Federal Space Agency in its current form was created by President Putin’s decree on March 9, 2004. It was preceded by the Russian Space Agency and the Russian Aerospace Agency.