Russia to launch three cosmonauts to the International Space Station
Russia to launch three cosmonauts to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan amid tensions with US over Ukraine invasion
Three Russian cosmonauts are due to launch to the International Space StationSoyuz spacecraft set for lift-off at 15:55 GMT (11:55 ET) at Baikonur CosmodromeComes despite heightened tensions between Russia and US over war in UkraineSoyuz commander Oleg Artemyev will lead team, joined by two space rookies
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Three Russian cosmonauts are due to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) later, despite escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine.
A Soyuz spacecraft will embark on a three-hour-plus ride to the orbiting outpost when it blasts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 15:55 GMT (11:55 ET).
Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev will lead the team, joined by two spaceflight rookies, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, on a science mission aboard the ISS that is set to last six-and-half months.
It will continue more than two decades of shared Russian-US presence aboard the laboratory.
However, it comes amid growing animosity between the two former Cold War adversaries, with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine putting strain on the countries’ collaboration in space.
Three Russian cosmonauts are due to launch to the International Space Station later, despite escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington over the war in Ukraine. Commander Oleg Artemyev will lead the team, joined by two spaceflight rookies, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, on a science mission aboard the ISS that is set to last six-and-half months
It will continue more than two decades of shared Russian-US presence aboard the laboratory
Concern: Recent actions by the chief of Russia’s space agency, Dmitry Rogozin (pictured), have prompted some in the US space industry to rethink the NASA-Roscosmos partnership
The trio of new cosmonauts will join the ISS’s current seven-member crew to replace three who are scheduled to fly back to Earth on March 30.
These are cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, as well as US astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who will have logged a NASA record-breaking 355 days in orbit by the time he returns to Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz capsule.
Remaining aboard the ISS with the newcomers until the next rotation a couple months later are three NASA astronauts – Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron – and German crewmate Matthias Maurer, of the European Space Agency.
Those four crew members arrived together in November aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-month stint in orbit.
Launched in 1998, the research platform orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth has been continuously occupied since November 2000, while operated by a US-Russian-led partnership including Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
It was born in part from a foreign policy initiative to improve US-Russian relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War hostility that spurred the original space race.
But recent actions by the chief of Russia’s space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, have prompted some in the US space industry to rethink the NASA-Roscosmos partnership.
As part of US economic sanctions against Putin’s government last month, President Joe Biden ordered high-tech export restrictions against Moscow that he said were designed to ‘degrade’ Russia’s aerospace industry, including its space program.
Rogozin immediately lashed out in a series of tweets suggesting the US sanctions could ‘destroy’ ISS teamwork and lead to the space station itself falling out of orbit.
A week later, he retaliated by announcing Russia would stop supplying or servicing Russian-made rocket engines used by two US aerospace NASA suppliers, suggesting American astronauts could use ‘broomsticks’ to get to orbit.
At about the same time, Moscow said it had ceased joint ISS research with Germany and forced the 11th-hour cancellation of a British satellite launch from Baikonur.
The Roscosmos chief also said last month that Russia was suspending its cooperation with European launch operations at the European Spaceport in French Guiana.
Ann Kapusta, executive director of nonprofit space advocacy group the Space Frontier Foundation, told Reuters in a recent statement that the United States should end its ISS collaboration with Russia.
NASA ‘s Mark Vande Hei (pictured) is due to return from the International Space Station with two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30
Russia’s space agency says it will return NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei to the Earth on a Soyuz rocket later this month, after earlier suggestions it would abandon him
Kapusta, a onetime ISS research operations lead for NASA, said ‘toxic behavior’ by Rogozin ‘shows there is no distance between Roscosmos and Putin’s war machine,’ and that Russia can no longer be trusted to safely cooperate in space.
NASA officials, however, insist that the US and Russian crew on the ISS are still working together professionally and that geopolitical tensions had not infected the space station.
Addressing the US space agency’s 60,000 employees on Monday, NASA chief Bill Nelson said: ‘NASA continues working with all our international partners, including State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations’ of the ISS.
NASA this week posted a fact sheet outlining the technical interdependency of the US and Russian segments of the space station.
For example, while US gyroscopes provide day-to-day control over ISS orientation in space and US solar arrays augment power supplies to the Russian module, Russia provides the propulsion used to keep the station in orbit.
