The Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center[4] (Государственный космический научно-производственный центр (ГКНПЦ) имени М. В. Хру́ничева in Russian) is a Moscow-based manufacturer of spacecraft and space-launch systems, including the Proton and Rokot rockets, and the Russian modules of Mir and the International Space Station.

The company's history dates back to 1916, when an automobile factory was established at Fili, western suburb of Moscow.

In 1981–1988, KB Salyut was part of the large NPO Energiya company, and become an independent design bureau in 1988.

Over the years 1989–1999, the country's space budget dropped by 88%[10] and established production cooperation chains disintegrated.

Both Khrunichev and the Salyut Design Bureau, which were now separate companies, attempted to remedy the situation by seeking earning possibilities abroad.

Salyut managed to win a contract for producing the 12KRB booster for the Indian GSLV rocket and entered an agreement with Daimler Benz Aerospace to develop a recoverable capsule used for experiments in the German-Japanese Express project.

The Khrunichev plant signed a $156 million contract to launch 21 Iridium satellites on three Proton-K rockets in 1997–1998.

Salyut managed to sign only one contract for launching the Inmarsat-3 F satellite with Proton-K at the low price of $36 million.

[11] The situation where two companies, the design bureau and the factory, competed with each other to sell the same product proved problematic.

[11] The income from commercial launch contracts and investments from Lockheed enabled Khrunichev to conduct a serious upgrade of its facilities.

This included an upgrade of the company's launch facilities in Baikonur, for which several hundred million dollars were invested.

The commercial earnings also allowed the company to develop new launch vehicles, boosters and spacecraft on its own without government support.

Khrunichev resisted the move for a long time, and managed to prevent the agency from installing its own leadership in the company.

Partly because of funding difficulties, the development process was slow[11] and Briz-KM experienced several failures in its early days.

After a Briz-M failure prevented the AMC-14 satellite from reaching its designated orbit, several modifications were made in this upper stage.

Latest version of the venerable rocket, which has been subject to several incremental upgrades, is Proton-M Enhanced; it has a lifting capability of 6,150 kg to geostationary transfer orbit.

Due to unrealistic deflator indices set by the Ministry of Defense, Khrunichev has not received enough money to order all necessary equipment for finishing the pad, pushing Angara's expected first flight to 2013.