international space station iss astronauts

#International space station iss astronauts series

NASA is also counting on Russia to guide the station safely back to Earth when it is retired in the coming years, reporting in a new ISS Transition Plan that three Progress spacecraft are slated to accomplish the job. That is traditionally carried out by Russia’s Progress, an expendable cargo vehicle. and its other partners could manage without Russia but it might prove so complicated and costly that it’s not worth doing, according to multiple experts on space station operations.įor example, one major operation that Russia performs is the periodic “re-boosting” of the station’s altitude. Many of the functions carried out by the ISS partners are intertwined. It also insisted in a statement that new economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its assault on Ukraine “will continue to allow U.S.-Russia civil space cooperation” and that “no changes are planned to the agency’s support for ongoing in orbit and ground station operations.” On Tuesday, Rogozin warned that Roscosmos would “reconsider its priorities” and focus on “independence in matters of space instrumentation.”įollowing Rogozin’s initial broadside, NASA said it “continues working with all our international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station.” “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit?” He also warned that without Russian space systems, the orbiting habitat could literally come crashing down. “Do you want to destroy our cooperation on the ISS?” he asked. In recent days, however, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, has threatened to sever the partnership. NASA pledged “to work with our international partners in Europe, Japan, Canada, and Russia to enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade.” But it also acknowledged that it needed to get buy-in from its international partners.

#International space station iss astronauts series

The Biden administration announced in December that it wants to extend the station until 2030 when a series of private space stations should come online. “NASA continues working relations with all of our international partners,” Nelson said Tuesday.

Meanwhile in low-earth orbit, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is scheduled to return from the space station on March 30 aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, breaking the American record for the longest duration spaceflight mission, at 355 days. Russia’s only female cosmonaut is also set to travel to the space station this year aboard SpaceX’s Dragon, the first commercial space capsule to ferry astronauts. Meanwhile, two NASA astronauts are wrapping up training with Roscosmos, three Russian cosmonauts are training with NASA, and up to five NASA astronauts are scheduled to begin training in Russia this month.