Russia-Ukraine war: Despite escalating geopolitical tensions amid Russian invasion of Ukraine, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday said that it will have no impact on International Space Station operations or the planned return of an American astronaut aboard a Russian capsule later this month.
NASA continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station, Dan Huot, NASA spokesperson told ANI.
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- Breaking the US single spaceflight record of 340 days, astronaut Mark Vande Hei is due to leave with two Russians aboard a Soyuz capsule for a touchdown in Kazakhstan on March 30. The astronaut will have logged 355 days in space by then, setting a new U.S. record. The world record of 438 continuous days in space belongs to Russia.
- This comes in the wake of rising fears that soaring tensions between the United States and Russia over Ukraine could leave the 55-year-old stranded on the outpost. Assuaging fears, Joel Montalbano, NASA's ISS program manager, said, "I can tell you for sure Mark is coming home on that Soyuz. We are in communication with our Russian colleagues. There's no fuzz on that. The three crew members are coming home."
- Astronaut Vande Hei, a retired Army colonel had moved into the space station last April, launching on a Soyuz from Kazakhstan with Pyotr Dubrov and another Russian. He and Dubrov stayed twice as long as usual to accommodate a Russian film crew that visited in October. Montalbano further said, "there's been some discussion about that, but I can tell you we're ready. Our Roscosmos colleagues have confirmed that they're ready to bring the whole crew home, all three of them."
- This comes following the Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin warning which came over the weekend that Western sanctions on Russia could cause the ISS to crash, by disrupting the operation of spacecraft vital to keeping the platform in orbit.
- Meanwhile on Monday, the Russian news agency TASS reported that "Russia's space corporation Roscosmos has never given its partners the slightest chance to doubt its reliability" and it stated that Vande Hei would go home as planned.
- Additionally, NASA's Montalbano said that there had been no changes in day-to-day activities. "All these activities have continued for 20 years and nothing has changed in the last three weeks: our control centers operate successfully, flawlessly, seamlessly," he said.
- It is important to note the US side of the ISS supplies power and life support, the Russian segment is vital for propulsion and attitude control, these interdependencies that were woven into the project from its inception in the 1990s.
- NASA has said it wants to keep the space station running until 2030, as do the European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies, while the Russians have not committed beyond the original end date of 2024 or so.
- The US and Russia are the prime operators of the orbiting outpost, permanently occupied for 21 years. Until SpaceX started launching astronauts in 2020, Americans regularly hitched rides on Russian Soyuz capsules for tens of millions of dollars per seat. The U.S. and Russian space agencies are still working on a long-term barter system in which a Russian would launch on a SpaceX capsule beginning this fall and an American would fly up on the Soyuz. That would help ensure a US and Russian station presence at all times, according to AP report.
- The European Space Agency also is reeling. After missing a 2020 launch deadline for its Mars rover — a joint European-Russian effort — the project was on track for a September liftoff from Kazakhstan. Now it’s most likely off until 2024, the next opportunity for Earth and Mars to be properly aligned. And Russia has pulled its staff out of the French-run launch site in South America, suspending Soyuz launches of European satellites.
(With inputs from agencies)
