US-Russian cooperation in space persists despite tensions over Ukraine

Some seven weeks after the Biden administration made its commitment to keep the ISS operational by 2030, NASA is still negotiating a new “crew exchange” deal with its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos. Under such an agreement, the two former space rivals would regularly share flights to the station on each other’s spacecraft, the US space agency said on Wednesday.

The research platform, about the length of a football field and orbiting about 250 miles (400 km) from Earth, is currently operating in microgravity alongside four Americans, two Russians and a German astronaut.

One of the NASA astronauts, Mark Vande Hei, flew to the outpost in March 2021 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and is due to return to Earth on March 30 with astronauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov aboard the Soyuz.

“Ongoing station operations are ongoing, including flying the crew to the orbital checkpoint and returning them safely to Earth,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot said in an email to Reuters. Roscosmos did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The ISS was born out of a foreign policy initiative to improve US-Russian relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War rivalry that fueled the original US-Soviet space race.

But US-Russian relations have deteriorated since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea territory from Ukraine, prompting Congress to ban new government contracts with US companies that use Russian rocket engineers for national security launches after 2022. According to the website SpacePolicyOnline.com to apply.

None of the sanctions imposed by Washington in response to Russia’s military incursion into eastern Ukraine this week was directed at Russia’s space program.

From Space Race to Teamwork

After ending its spaceflight program in 2011, the United States began paying Roscosmos to transport NASA astronauts to and from the space station aboard Soyuz capsules. NASA will resume launching its own crew members from US soil in 2020, even as it continues to take some rides on the Soyuz.

The new agreement will pave the way for more NASA crew for Russian astronauts to fly on Soyuz in exchange for sharing rides with American astronauts on SpaceX flights, all free of charge. In anticipation of such a deal, three Russian astronauts are already training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center near Houston, NASA said.

The United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 11-nation European Space Agency are varying the terms of extending ISS operations beyond their current end date of 2024, as re-supply of the station continues.

A Cygnus cargo spacecraft launched Saturday for NASA by Northrop Grumman arrived at the orbiting laboratory on Monday carrying 8,300 pounds of food, fuel and equipment.

To what extent US and Russian space interests are underscored, Cygnus was flown into orbit atop an Antares rocket, the first stage of which is largely designed and built in Ukraine and powered by two Russian-built RD-181 engines. is operated.

Another Russian motor is the main engine of the Atlas V rocket flown by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between the Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corp.

Even before the Ukraine crisis escalated in recent weeks, US-Russian space cooperation was shaken in mid-November, when Russia detonated one of its own passive surveillance satellites in an unannounced missile test that caused a low- Earth’s orbit had generated a debris field, threatening space. station.

All seven ISS crew members, including two astronauts, were forced to take refuge in their docked spacecraft after about two hours in case a quick escape was needed.

At the time, NASA chief Bill Nelson called the anti-satellite test “reckless.” The Washington Post quoted him as saying that Russia’s space agency was astonished by the test and “probably as amazed as we were.”