Space industry in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan Gharysh Sapary

Astana, Kazakhstan government agency

Kazakhstan Gharysh Sapary (JSC National Company "Kazakhstan Gharysh Sapary", KGS) is Kazakhstan's national space company, headquartered at the National Space Center in Astana and operating under the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. The company's National Space Center became operational on 3 July 2010, and KGS operates Kazakhstan's civilian satellite infrastructure and ground segment from that base. KGS operates Kazakhstan's two Earth-observation satellites, KazEOSat-1 and KazEOSat-2, in service since 2015; KazEOSat-1, a high-resolution optical imaging satellite, was built by EADS Astrium (now Airbus Defence and Space) and launched on a Vega rocket from French Guiana in April 2014 as part of Kazakhstan's Earth Remote Sensing Satellite System. The company manages an Assembly-Test Complex used for spacecraft design, manufacturing and testing, together with ground stations that process the satellites' imagery into cartography, photogrammetry, geo-analytics and mobile-object-tracking products sold to government and commercial customers. KGS is wholly state-owned and generates revenue from a mix of government appropriations and commercial remote-sensing data sales. It is organizationally distinct from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Kazakhstan leases to Russia, and from Soviet-era space infrastructure; KGS instead represents Kazakhstan's independent, domestically controlled satellite-operations capability that has developed since the 2000s.

Ghalam (Казахстанский спутник) is a Nur-Sultan (Astana), Kazakhstan-based satellite manufacturer founded in 2019 as a joint venture between Kazcosmos (the Kazakh national space agency) and Airbus Defence and Space, established to build Kazakhstan's indigenous satellite manufacturing capability. The company assembles and integrates small satellites at its facility in the Baiterek Cosmodrome area near the Baikonur Cosmodrome, taking advantage of Kazakhstan's unique position as home to the world's oldest and largest launch facility — giving domestic satellites direct access to Soyuz and Proton launch infrastructure without international export licensing delays. Ghalam's initial mandate was to produce Earth observation and telecommunications microsatellites for domestic government customers including the Ministry of Digital Development and KazMunayGas (the national oil company), which requires environmental monitoring of Kazakhstan's vast oil and gas infrastructure across 2.7 million square kilometers of territory. The Airbus partnership provides Ghalam with satellite design know-how, component supply chain access, and quality management systems while Kazakhstan provides launch access, government procurement, and the strategic interest in building sovereign industrial capacity for the space sector. Kazakhstan's space ambitions are part of a broader economic diversification strategy away from oil revenues, with space manufacturing and launch services seen as high-value industries to develop domestically. Ghalam competes in the emerging central Asian space market alongside Uzbekistan's nascent satellite program and benefits from Kazakhstan's long history as a space launch nation — the Baikonur site has hosted launches since 1955 and launched Sputnik-1 in 1957.

Baikonur Cosmodrome

Baikonur, Kazakhstan government

Baikonur Cosmodrome is the world's oldest operational spaceport, located on the steppe of southern Kazakhstan at 45.9° N latitude, constructed by the Soviet Union beginning in 1955 to serve as the primary launch site for its space and ballistic missile programs — and the origin point for more defining moments in space history than any other facility on Earth. From Baikonur, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 — the world's first artificial satellite, beginning the Space Age. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin lifted off aboard Vostok 1 from Site 1 (officially named Gagarin's Start after his flight) to become the first human in space, beginning his 108-minute orbital flight. The cosmodrome subsequently hosted all Soviet and Russian crewed missions including the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, 1963), the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov, 1965), all Mir space station module launches, and continued as the exclusive launch site for Soyuz crewed flights to the International Space Station through the Soyuz program's active ISS period. Following Soviet dissolution, Russia negotiated a Kazakhstan lease paying approximately $115 million annually for the cosmodrome complex spanning 6,717 square kilometers with 15 launch complexes and 4 launch pads. Russia progressively shifted uncrewed launches to the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East to reduce Kazakhstan dependency, while Soyuz crew flights and commercial Proton-M launches continued from Baikonur. The Kazakh government has developed the adjacent Baiterek launch complex for Soyuz-5 and future vehicles.