Despite Recent Tensions, NASA and Roscosmos Sign Seat-Swap Agreement

It’s been a rocky few months for U.S.-Russia relations, with discord between the 2 nations arising each on the bottom and in house. Despite the present dangerous emotions, NASA and Roscosmos have finalized an settlement by which NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts will fly aboard one another’s spacecraft.

Announcement of the brand new settlement got here on Friday, July 15, the identical day that Dmitry Rogozin was dismissed from his place as director common of Roscosmos. It’s not clear if the dismissal of the ornery house chief is related to the brand new deal, but it surely does counsel that the 2 house businesses are discovering methods to work collectively regardless of tensions arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing financial sanctions.

For the settlement, U.S. astronauts will trip aboard Soyuz capsules similar to they did previous to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the introduction of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. On the flip aspect, Russian cosmonauts will get to strap themselves right into a Crew Dragon for the very first time. The first of those 4 built-in crew flights, by which no funds might be exchanged between the house businesses, is scheduled for September. NASA/SpaceX and Roscosmos might be accountable for transporting astronauts to and from the ISS and supply full mission help, together with coaching, flight operations, touchdown, and rescue providers, in accordance with a NASA press release.

The purpose for the built-in crews is to take care of secure operations of the orbital outpost, in accordance with NASA. ISS operations depend on contributions from 5 house businesses, the opposite three being the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

“Flying integrated crews ensures there are appropriately trained crew members on board the station for essential maintenance and spacewalks,” NASA stated in its assertion. “It also protects against contingencies such as a problem with any crew spacecraft, serious crew medical issues, or an emergency aboard the station that requires a crew and the vehicle they are assigned to return to Earth sooner than planned.”

NASA’s Frank Rubio, together with Roscosmos’s Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, are scheduled to launch aboard Soyuz MS-22 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 21. NASA’s Loral O’Hara is slated to launch aboard Soyuz MS-23 in spring 2023, on a mission that can embody cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, together with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, will participate in NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the house station, which can blast off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in both September or October. Kikina, 35, is presently Russia’s solely girl astronaut, and he or she’ll be the primary Russian girl to go to the ISS in eight years, in accordance with the government-run Russia Beyond.

Cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, together with NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg, will participate in NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission, which is focused for a launch in spring 2023.

So it’s apparently enterprise as regular in house, though issues are very removed from regular on the bottom. NASA appears keen to miss Russia’s indiscretions, equivalent to utilizing the house station to advertise its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, for the sake of sustaining regular and secure operations in low Earth orbit. It is smart, but it surely nonetheless leaves a bitter style.