Space cooperation, a preserved domain
Until recently, space cooperation between Russia and Western countries was one of the few areas not to have suffered too much from the sanctions decreed against Moscow after the annexation in 2014 of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
However, some tensions had arisen, especially after Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed nationalist Dmitry Rogozin as head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos in 2018.
The latter regularly displays his support for what Russia calls “a special military operationin Ukraine and claimed that recent Western sanctions introduced against Moscow could bring about the downfall of the ISS.
According to him, the functioning of the Russian vessels supplying the ISS will be disrupted by the sanctions, thus affecting the Russian segment of the station. As a result, it could cause “the ditching or landing of the ISS weighing 500 tons“, he warned on March 12.
Principle of interdependence
The thrusters of the Russian vessels docked at the station are indeed used to correct the orbit of the space structure. A procedure carried out ten times a year to keep it at the right altitude, or to avoid space debris in its path.
Americans alone do not have this capability, Joel Montalbano, the station’s program director for NASA, confirmed Monday. “The Space Station was designed on the principle of interdependence (…) it is not a process in which one group can become separated from the other.“
“At present, there is no indication that our Russian partners want to do things differently. So we plan to continue operations as we do today“, he said.
The latest hitch in space cooperation, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Thursday that it had acted the suspension of the Russian-European ExoMars mission and the search for alternatives for the launch of four more missions due to the offensive in Ukraine.
Dmitry Rogozin criticized “a very bitter event“and asserted that Russia could carry out this mission on its own,”in a few years“.