The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to end decades of cooperation between Russia and Western countries, especially the United States, in space exploration projects.
Interplanetary probes and satellite launches have been affected, but nothing better symbolizes this possible split than the International Space Station (ISS).
The station was deliberately built with interdependent American and Russian modules — meaning they needed each other for the station to thrive — and since 2000 it has been managed with large contributions from the US and Russia.
But it has become the subject of a war of words on social media with the head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), Dmitry Rogozin.
In a series of posts since February 25, Rogozin has made a number of allegations, most dramatically the suggestion that sanctions against Russia could cause the ISS to crash to Earth.
Debate over the ISS
Russia controls critical aspects of the station’s propulsion systems, including one that prevents the structure from being pulled into our planet’s atmosphere.
Rogozin (also a former Russian deputy prime minister) hinted that Russian cosmonauts might abandon the ISS and leave behind American astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who spent nearly an entire year on board — nearly all flights to and from the station are operated by Russians.
Roscosmos, however, distanced itself from Rogozin’s observations. “Roscosmos has never given reason to doubt its reliability as a partner,” the agency said in a March 15 statement.
Four days later, three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the station. As for Vande Hei, the American will hitch a ride with two Russian colleagues who return home on March 30th.
The current ISS deal guarantees operations until 2024, but the US is pushing for an extension to 2030. Russia — or rather, Rogozin — suggested last December that it was not interested in remaining a partner beyond 2024.
broken partnerships
Several agreements between Moscow and its counterparts such as the European Space Agency (ESA) have been frozen or suspended since the beginning of the war, most notably the launch of a European astromobile to Mars, which was supposed to fly with the help of a Russian rocket. The project was suspended indefinitely by the ESA.
“As an intergovernmental organization charged with developing and implementing space programs in full respect of European values, we deeply regret the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression against Ukraine,” ESA said in a March 17 statement.
“While recognizing the impact on scientific space exploration, ESA is fully in line with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its Member States.”
Russia retaliated by withdrawing an agreement with ESA for joint launch operations from the Guyana Space Center. The partnership has resulted in 26 European satellites being put into orbit by Russian Soyuz rockets since 2011 — one such launch carried the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope last December.
Finally, Roscosmos announced on February 26 that it was ending NASA’s participation in the Venera D mission, which involves launching an orbiter and lander to Venus in 2029.
‘Let them fly on their brooms’
Moscow also said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.
“Let them fly on their brooms,” Rogozin told Russian state news channel Rossiya 24 earlier this month.
In its most recent public statement on the Ukraine crisis, the US space agency Nasa played down Rogozin’s position.
“The other people working in the Russian civilian space program are professionals. They don’t lose anything to us, American astronauts and American mission control,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Associated Press March 18.
In fact, the Americans and Russians have been cooperating on space affairs for decades, despite the Cold War.
After the space race of the 1950s and 1960s, symbolically won by Washington with the moon landings in 1969, representatives of the two countries literally shook hands in space in 1975 as part of the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission.
Russian ride
The partnership became very useful to NASA after the Space Shuttle program retired: between 2011 and 2020, Russian rockets became the only way for American astronauts and many other foreigners to go into space.
Although Space X, a company owned by American billionaire Elon Musk, started taking astronauts to the ISS in 2020, that hasn’t really changed the situation.
Many US operations still rely on Russian-made rocket engines — although NASA is currently developing a new rocket, the Vulcan, which will use engines made by the US company Blue Origin.
Tensions between Russia and its western partners had already arisen before the invasion of Ukraine. Bleddyn Bowe, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester in the UK, explains that relations began to sour after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“It was a change of direction, because that’s when Russia started doing things that were previously unthinkable for European countries,” says Bowe.
While the expert is not surprised by Moscow’s retaliation, he points out that Russia has more to lose in the long run in terms of space policy.
“Russia has been a declining space power for some time as it has failed to modernize critical parts of its space industry,” notes Bowe.
“It depends on computer technology imports not only from the West, but also from South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.”
Partnership with China
With the Russian economy hit by unprecedented sanctions, the space program is likely to suffer greatly.
Rocket launches are a precious source of money for Roscosmos — a single trip on a Russian manned flight cost NASA more than $90 million in 2020.
Space analysts believe that the disruption caused by the conflict in Ukraine will increase Moscow’s desire to seek space partnerships to the east: Russia had already announced a series of plans for joint missions with China in 2021, which included the development of a moon base. .
In recent years, China has become an emerging space power with rival aspirations to the US and Europe — Beijing, for example, hopes to have its own space station, Tiangong, fully operational by the end of the year.
China is not part of the ISS consortium of nations and has been officially barred from sending astronauts there since 2011, when the US Congress passed a law banning official American contact with the Chinese space program — a decision motivated by “concerns about national security”.
But the impact of the myriad sanctions on the Russian economy could limit Moscow’s role in that partnership.
“China has a much more robust space program than Russia,” says Professor John Logsdon, an expert on US Space Policy.
“It’s Russia that needs China, not the other way around.”
NASA’s 2022 budget, for example, is $24 billion, nearly 10 times that of Roscosmos, according to data released by the Russian parliament last October.
China’s space budget, which is not publicly available, has been estimated at around $9 billion in 2020.
This investment gap, Logdson believes, could dictate a future in which Russia is relegated to a secondary role in space exploration.
“The Russian space program has been in a losing position for some time now,” says the professor.
“It is likely to be isolated unless China really accepts it.”
