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The John Batchelor Show

PREVIEW HEADLINE: Roscosmos Debates New Space Station Orbit: Cost-Effective Soyuz Path Versus Polar Orbit for Northern Survey GUEST NAME: Anatoly Zak 50-WORD SUMMARY: Anatoly Zak discusses Roscosmos's debate on the orbit for a post-ISS space station, bala

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

PREVIEW HEADLINE: Roscosmos Debates New Space Station Orbit: Cost-Effective Soyuz Path Versus Polar Orbit for Northern Survey GUEST NAME: Anatoly Zak 50-WORD SUMMARY: Anatoly Zak discusses Roscosmos's debate on the orbit for a post-ISS space station, balancing money against usefulness. Choosing the 51° orbit allows use of the operational Soyuz vehicle for delivering crews and is the cheapest, simplest, and most economical way to proceed. However, the polar orbit is more conducive for surveying the northern shoreline, which is opening due to ice retreat.


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0:00.0

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0:26.3

This is John Batchel, conversation with Anatoli Zach, my colleague who keeps the Russian spaceweb.com, following the adventures of Ross Cosmos, the most famous of all big space

0:32.7

organizations, first with Sputnik, first with Gagarin. Never quite to the moon, not yet.

0:38.5

But right now they're debating a new space station post-ISS.

0:43.1

Two orbits, 51 degrees, which is where the ISS is approximately now.

0:48.3

Easy to reach and the Soyuz booster can reach it.

0:51.6

Don't need a new big booster like the Angara.

0:56.0

Or there's the polar orbit,

1:02.4

which is conducive to Russia because it's mostly a northern land, and they want to survey the northern shoreline, which is presumed to be opening because of the retreat of the ice. So the

1:09.1

debate is money versus usefulness over the, over the term of this length of the

1:14.9

space station's life.

1:16.9

Anatoly explains very carefully here.

1:19.8

This is post-ISS in the near future.

1:23.8

Hotel Mars with David Livingston, much more of this tonight.

1:28.1

Under certain scenarios, it is.

1:30.5

So, for example, if they decide to use Soyuz spacecraft for delivering crews,

1:38.1

then that station will have to be in 51.6 degree orbit. Because again, like I mentioned before, you have the, depending on

1:48.1

the choice of your orbit, you will have different, you might have different transport

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