The breakup of the Soviet Union was thought to be the last nail on the Russian's space program's coffin. But news of its impending demise was greatly exaggerated. There's no denying Russia hit some major bumps right after the Iron Curtain fell, but its position as a major global space power is intact and thriving.

While its true that Russia took a back seat for the past 15 years, there are signs that the country is ready to grab the wheels and fend off challenges from China and other emerging space powers. Take a look at Russia's uber-busy sked.

2006 - 2015:
Luna-Glob project will be initiated by the RAS GEOHI geochemistry institute. The mission will study the internal structure of the Moon, look for signs of water ice in the cold trap on the lunar pole, and establish whether the Moon has a nucleus, and of what size.

2007:
Russian researchers are planning to launch the RadioAstron observatory. The RadioAstron observatory, a space-based telescope,is designed to monitor solar wind plasma, magnetic field, and energy particle flows, at huge distances from the Earth.

2009:
Russia heads for Mars with the launch of Phobos-Ground mission. under the ambitious project a spacecraft will fly the Phobos satellite to the Red Planet where it will take a probe of the ground, and return it to Earth. A long-life station will remain on Mars for automatic monitoring of its climate, and the near-Mars space.

2009 - 2011:
The next stage of planetary studies - delivery of Martian ground to Earth and deployment of several small research stations on the surface of Mars.

2010:
Russia plans to launch its Spektr-UF extra-atmospheric observatory into high-elliptical orbit with the apogee of 300,000 km, or in the area of the liberation point DEFINE of the Sun-Earth system to monitor the electromagnetic spectrum in the ultraviolet range. The Hubble space telescope, being in a low orbit, loses about 50% of the observation time.The Russian telescope will be able to receive the images of comparable quality spectrum, which are 20 times weaker than those observed by the Hubble.

2010-2012:
Russia is expected to have from eight to ten space vehicles.

2012:
Conduct observations in the low orbit ionosphere with the help of the Chibis micro satellites to be launched from the International Space Station. Resonans space vehicles will do the monitoring in the internal magnetosphere and the radiation belts.

2014 - 2020:
Launch small solar Strannik spacecraft for precision measurements of the magnetosphere which are crucial for the formation of space weather.

Other major activities pencilled in the Russian Space Program to-do list include:

• Spectrum-RG/eRosita/Lobster program, the Roskosmos (Russian Space Agency) and its European counterpart space programs for X-ray space studies, which will place an observatory into an ideal equatorial orbit (in terms of minimal background radiation) at an altitude below the Earth's radiation belt.
• Researchers are discussing such planetary projects as the construction of a module for deployment on Mercury, and development of a long-life Venus-9 surface station.
• Russian researchers are planning to deploy a group of Klipper micro satellites with a solar sail at a distance of three to four million kilometers from the Earth.
• Under Project Intergeliozond, researchers are planning to send a spacecraft to the Sun which will allow scientists to see the Sun's polar zones, which are invisible from the Earth.