TechTheDay

It’s been announced that NASA astronauts are going to ride Russian rockets while cosmonauts will be catching lifts with American company SpaceX to the ISS starting in September. Roscosmos, the space agency of Russia, had recently signed a long sought-after deal to integrate missions to the space station that will allow astronauts to get on the Soyuz in return for enabling cosmonauts to ride US-made spacecraft, despite political tensions over Ukraine. 

This agreement helps ensure that the ISS will have Americans and Russians onboard to maintain the smooth operations of this orbiting outpost. This deal—overshadowed somewhat by the news surrounding leadership changes with Roscosmos—has long since been at work and finalized, showing the continuing US-Russia cooperation, at least in space. And through this collaborative venture, Roscosmos hopes to develop cooperation not only within the space station’s program but also when it comes to facilitating space exploration.

NASA agrees that it will ensure the safe operations like e of the ISS, like exploring space, and keep everyone aboard protected. There are currently seven people in the station: three Americans, three Russians, and an Italian.

Tensions with the ISS

Roscosmos and NASA, the twenty-year-old core partners of the space station, have been looking to renew their routine integrated crew flights as a part of their respective agencies’ civil alliance. It’s also one of—if not the last—cooperative links between the two countries, especially as the rising tensions continue to flare over Russia’s questionable military operations in Ukraine.

The first of these integrated missions under the agreement will begin come September, with Frank Rubio, an American astronaut, launching into the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome alongside Dmitry Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev, two Russian cosmonauts. In the same month, Anna Kikina, a cosmonaut, will join one Japanese and two Americans aboard the Crew Dragon of SpaceX that will be taking flight from NASA’s Space Center in Florida.

Rogozin is replaced

Prior to the announcement of the agreement, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, replaced Rocosmos’ head, Dimitry Rogozin. In his place, the former deputy and defense and prime minister, Yuri Borisov, was elected to lead the agency. The Kremlin has yet to comment on this change. However, many believe it to be because of the confrontational stance he had taken when Racosmos had been sanctioned for the role it took in the defense industry when the country sent troops to fight in Ukraine.

He stated that Western cooperation would be impossible, bragging about the nuclear potential of Russia and threatening to pull the agency out of ISS-related projects. Based on a video that was posted on the Telegram channel of Roscosmos, the space agency’s progress was hailed under the leadership of Rogozin. Some achievements include eighty-six recorded successful launches, the construction of their segment in the ISS, and test flights for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Only time will tell whether this will affect the relationship between the United States and Russia and their coordinated space missions in the coming years or impact any existing programs like Artemis.