The United States said on Friday it would resume flights to the International Space Station with Russia, despite its attempts to isolate Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine.
“To ensure the safe operation of the International Space Station, protect the lives of astronauts, and ensure continued U.S. presence in space, NASA will resume integrated crews on U.S.-crew and Russian Soyuz spacecraft,” said the U.S. Space agency NASA in a statement.
NASA said astronaut Frank Rubio would fly with two Russian cosmonauts on a Soyuz rocket launched on March 21.
For the first time, Russian cosmonauts will join NASA astronauts on SpaceX’s new Crew-5, which will launch from Florida in September with a Japanese astronaut also on the mission.
Another joint mission on the SpaceX Crew-6 will fly in early 2023, NASA said.
The move comes despite the European Space Agency severing ties with Russia earlier this week over a mission to get a rover to Mars, infuriating Russia’s space chief Dmitry Rogozin, who accused cosmonauts on the ISS of using a European-made one banned robotic arms.
But hours before NASA’s announcement, President Vladimir Putin fired Rogozin, a hot-headed nationalist and ardent supporter of the Ukraine invasion who once quipped that US astronauts should get to the space station on trampolines rather than Russian rockets.
NASA said the International Space Station was always designed to be operated jointly with the participation of the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.
“The station was designed to be interdependent and rely on contributions from each space agency to function. No agency is able to function independently of the others,” it said.
– New ways to take off –
Soyuz rockets were the only way to reach the space station until SpaceX, run by billionaire Elon Musk, unveiled a capsule in 2020.
The last NASA astronaut to bring a Soyuz to the station was NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2021.
He returned to Earth in March this year with Russian cosmonauts, also on a Soyuz.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Vande Hei said that despite their nations’ strained relationship, the cosmonauts remained his “very dear friends.”
“We supported each other in everything,” he said. “And I never had any doubts about continuing to work with them.”
The United States imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia after Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, defying Western warnings.
The sanctions, which include severe restrictions on financial interactions, have prompted an exodus from Russia of leading US brands, including Starbucks and McDonald’s.
But the International Space Station is unique. It was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for cooperation between the US and Russia following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.
The ISS is expected to be shut down over the next decade.
Rogozin, the outgoing head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, had warned that Western sanctions could hamper cooperation.
“If you block cooperation with us, then who will save the ISS from uncontrolled deorbiting and crashing into US or European territory?” Rogozin wrote in a tweet earlier this year – noting that the station doesn’t have much of flies over Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has not indicated that his ouster meant Putin was unhappy with Rogozin.
An independent media outlet said he would be promoted and could be put in charge of the occupied territories in Ukraine.
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