The Russian space program's push to enter into the world's commercial market, driven by the sheer need to survive in an era of severely limited finances, continued to make some progress in 1999 but also suffered a severe setback with the loss of two Proton launchers. First launched in July 1965, Proton, originally intended as a ballistic missile (UR500), by end-1999 has flown 189 times since 1980, with 12 failures (reliability: 0.936). Its launch rate in recent years has been as high as 13 per year. Between 1985-1999, 137 Proton and 358 Soyuz rockets were launched, with nine failures of the Proton and nine of the Soyuz, giving a combined reliability index of 0.964. Of the nine Protons launched in '99 (1998: seven), seven were for commercial customers such as Telstar, Asiasat, JSAT, Nimiq, and SES/Astra. After the second Proton crash on 10/27, no further Protons could be launched in 1999 due to a temporary embargo on launches imposed by Kazakhstan and the need for a thorough investigation.

Of the three launches of the Russian-Ukrainian Zenit-2 rocket, two were conducted from the new ocean-based Sea Launch facility Odyssey (in which RSC-Energia has a 25% share), the first carrying a test dummy, the second the DirecTV-1R satellite. After its failure in the preceding year, the Zenit thus made a comeback of considerable commercial importance. Also good news for the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC) was the launch of Lockheed Martin Intersputnik's LMI-1 on a Proton. After the subsequent loss of its Ekspress-A1 satellite on its Proton, pressure increased on RSCC to fill and use its allocated slots and frequencies in geosynchronous orbit by the fall of 2000, when Russia's international priority for certain positions will expire if they are not occupied. The satellite navigation system GLONASS, Russia's equivalent of GPS, requires 24 satellites for the full system, but there were only 15 in the constellation byh late 1999.

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