Tensions between the US and Russia reach space, but the ISS is safe… for now

The invasion russian of Ukraine has raised questions about the future of the International Space Station (ISS)long a symbol of post-Cold War cooperation, where astronauts and cosmonauts proudly live and work side by side.

The ISS was the subject of several threatening tweets from the head of the Russian space agency, Dmitri Rogozin, who warned on Thursday that US sanctions could “destroy” cooperation between the two countries and said the research platform would hurtle towards Earth without the help from Russia.

Experts see such threats as part of heated political rhetoric, given the mutual trust of the two sides for the safety of their personnel. But they could speed up a long-awaited divorce.

“No one wants to endanger the lives of astronauts and cosmonauts with political maneuvering,” said John Logsdon, a professor and space analyst at George Washington University.

“It was a very conscious decision when Russia came on board as a station partner in 1994 to make the station interdependent,” he added, a decision made at the time with cost and speed concerns in mind.

hostile tweets

The ISS, a cooperation between the United States, Canada, Japan, Europe and Russia, is divided into two sections: the American orbital segment and the Russian orbital segment, each of which was built and is managed by its country.

Currently, the ISS relies on a Russian propulsion system to maintain its orbit, some 250 miles (400 kilometers) above sea level, while the US segment is responsible for electricity and life support systems.

Rogozin referenced this codependency in a series of hostile tweets posted shortly after US President Joe Biden announced sanctions against Russia’s aerospace industry.

“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from uncontrollably falling out of orbit and into US or European territory?” Rogozin wrote, noting that the station does not fly over much of Russia.

NASA, for its part, responded with a bland statement emphasizing that it “continues to work” with “all” of its international partners, “including the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station.”

Julie Patarin-Jossec, a French academic and author of a book on the ISS, stressed that Rogozin “is a political figure, known to be very loyal to power” and has a history of making virulent statements.

Those aboard the station – Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, Americans Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and German Matthias Maurer – are highly trained professionals and unlikely to be affected, he said.

“Most of the astronauts of the last decades, or who have had experience on the ISS, are very attached to international cooperation,” said Patarin-Jossec.

What’s more, he added, withdrawing from the ISS program would leave Russia without a manned space program unless it quickly turns to work with China aboard the Tiangong space station, which is still under construction and currently houses a three-member crew. .

Long story

Cooperation between the United States and Russia has a long history dating back to the height of the Cold War, but it has not been without its twists and turns.

After the United States sent the first men to the Moon in 1969, then-President Richard Nixon looked for opportunities to make the space program more cooperative and invited allies to join the space shuttle program.

“In parallel, he and Henry Kissinger decided to use a possible joint US-Soviet mission as a symbol of detente,” Logsdon explained.

That led to the historic Apollo-Soyuz mission of 1975, when American and Russian spacecraft docked for the first time in a globally televised event.

The partnership was supposed to expand further, with possible space shuttle missions to one of the first Russian space stations, but President Jimmy Carter rejected those plans after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

It wasn’t until after the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russian officials approached the Bill Clinton administration with the idea of ​​a merger, paving the way for the launch of the first ISS module in 1998.

The ISS has weathered geopolitical storms in the past, most notably Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, but the current tensions, which Logsdon said were the most serious since the Cuban missile crisis, could mark the beginning of the finish.

Space observer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics noted that the United States is currently developing propulsion capability using Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus payload probes.

NASA currently wants the station to be in orbit until 2030, while Russia has not committed beyond 2024.

“I think that unless the current situation is resolved quickly, it could affect Russia’s desire to remain involved or the United States’ desire to remain involved,” Logsdon said.