Ukraine Invasion by Russia Is Creating Tensions Between NASA and Roscosmos Over International Space Station

More than a generation of space cooperation between the US and Russia could go downhill quickly, after Russia invaded Ukraine and as a result. economic sanctions imposed by much of Europe and the United States Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, has spent the past several days strongly suggesting that his country is prepared to withdraw from its commitment to the National Space Station. economy, as well as nix its other partnerships with NASA and the European Space Agency.

“Roscosmos will review its priorities and focus on achieving full import independence in matters of space equipment,” said Rogozin. tweeted out on Tuesday. This follows a flurry of inciting comments sent the day beforein which Rogozin criticized how the new sanctions would affect Russia’s space program and effectively threatened that without Russia, the ISS would fall out of orbit uncontrollably and crash America, even India or China.

The temperature is rising for all parties involved, and some have taken action. For example, Germany’s Max Planck Institute turned off the main instrument on the Russian research satellite Spektr-RG. Russia is Threats to refuse to launch more satellites from UK internet company OneWeb. The European Joint Mars Exploration Mission with Russia, ExoMars, is currently “very difficult“Coming out this year, will push the mission back to 2024 at the earliest. John Logsdon, an expert on space policy at George Washington University, told The Daily Beast: “Cooperation is falling apart in the coming years. possible field.

But the ISS is where both sides really depend on each other. The station is divided into two parts: the Russian side; and the NASA-led side includes Europe, Japan and Canada. There are currently four Americans, two Russians and one German living on the ISS. There are also currently two NASA astronauts training with Roscosmos and three Russian cosmonauts training with NASA.

NASA

The entire station – including the Russian side – relies on power from NASA-operated solar panels that decorate the spacecraft. And the ISS remains in orbit thanks to the Russian Progressive vehicles that dock and periodically fire their thrusters to maintain the proper altitude.

“NASA continues to work with all of our international partners, including Roscosmos State Space Corporation, to ensure the continued safe operation of the International Space Station,” the agency said. said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “New export controls will further enable US-Russian civil space cooperation. No changes are planned to the agency’s support for ground station and orbital continuity operations. “NASA said it expects no changes to the upcoming crewed missions to and from the station.

The breakup of the ISS partnership could go a few different ways. It is unlikely that Russia will completely abandon the ISS. It owns half of them, after all, and has poured billions of dollars into building and maintaining those structures in space. Without the ISS, it would lose the long-term human presence in orbit.

Russia could simply remove its modules from the ISS and operate them as part of some sort of separate space station. Logsdon indicates that very little science is run in those modules, so decoupling the ISS won’t really affect any ongoing research.

But as said earlier, the country still doesn’t have a way to power them independently.

Meanwhile, the US and its partners will have to find a way to keep the orbiting laboratory from falling back to Earth. One option might be to use Northrop Grumman’s ISS resupply vehicle, Cygnus, to replace the Progress spacecraft’s propulsion functions. Cygnus is being tested for that purpose later this month. “If that test is successful, then Russia can leave with essentially no technical or programmatic consequences for the United States,” Logsdon said.

NASA

Elon Musk suggested SpaceX’s vehicles can do the job, too – though it will need some modifications. NASA finally wants Boeing’s upcoming Starliner spacecraft to carry out the mission, but that vehicle has yet to successfully fly to the ISS and is many years behind schedule.

Greg Autry, a space policy expert at Arizona State University, told The Daily Beast: “Also, mounting solar propulsion into the station could be a good solution. NASA and space technology company Maxar are working on it for the upcoming Lunar Gateway space station to support future moon mission. “Perhaps that hardware can be redirected or scaled up.”

Unfortunately, none of this is an instant, reliable solution. “It’s going to be very difficult for us to operate on our own,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s deputy chief operating officer, told reporters Monday.

A split of several years is possible — Russia is only officially committed to the ISS until 2024, although most stakeholders expect it to extend the partnership for at least a few years. Another year. “I’m sure the pre-invasion priority outcome is to maintain Russia as a partner for the duration of the ISS’s existence,” Logsdon said. “Because that’s the way [the ISS] designed.” NASA currently wants keep the ISS running until 2031.

However, on Tuesday, Roscosmos told Russian news agency TASS: “The problem is extensive [ISS] agreement under current conditions causes our skepticism”. While Rogozin is no stranger to controversy and provocation, his comments suggest a quicker exit than a remote one.

However, Autry still doubts Russia will pull out of the ISS anytime soon. “It would render their human program aimless, a major blow to national credibility,” he said. “Self-piloting is expensive, and I doubt their astronauts want to be completely dependent on Russian hardware at this point,” referring to thorough quality control of Russia’s own space technologies.

It is likely that Russia will begin to cooperate more closely with China (the two countries are no longer loose agreement to cooperate on the moon). “But given Russia’s unreliability in both its technical enforcement and political behavior, I’m not sure China really wants them,” Autry said. “Playing the role of a junior partner on Chinese radio is also a blow to their ego.”

What seems most likely is that NASA and Russia will continue to work together as needed through 2024 and possibly a few more years. But once an orderly and clean exit strategy is achieved, the ISS will likely be the last significant space partnership between Russia and the West. “I’m sure there are people at NASA who must be eager to get out of this dysfunctional relationship where a drunken Dmitry Rogozin threatens to drop the ISS into India or China,” says Autry. “That can’t excite those countries either.”