“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station from falling back into US or European territory unchecked?” tweeted Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rogozin, friend of President Vladimir Putin and since 2014 under sanctions from the west, often expresses himself as a Russian muzjiek (guy). But nonsense is not his implicit threat. The 420-ton space station needs a push every few weeks as it slowly loses altitude due to resistance from the thin atmosphere at 418 kilometers. without that boost of the rocket engine of a mounted Russian Progress freighter, it would crash after several months. “The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks lie with you,” Rogozin said delicately.
Meanwhile, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) emphasized that they would abide by the sanctions, which are intended to affect the Russian aerospace sector, and that cooperation with Europe, Japan and Canada on the ISS will continue. There are now four Americans, two Russians and the German Matthias Maurer on board the ISS. NASA astronauts also train in Russia and Russian cosmonauts in Houston.
The Western partners want to continue with the space station until 2030. Russia previously reported that it would withdraw from the ISS project by 2024, partly because of the aging of the Russian nuclear modules, which cannot be disconnected. Russia has plans for its own space station using detachable modules, and the country wants to build a manned moon base with China.
Meanwhile, NASA has set up an emergency team to develop scenarios to take over the tasks of the Russian ISS nuclear modules after 2024. A trial is already scheduled for April in which the American Cygnus freighter will give the ISS the necessary boost.
In a later interview with Tass, Rogozin also said that on closer inspection he was referring to the period after 2024; the acute crash of the ISS has been postponed for a while. Yet the war, sanctions and rapidly icy relations seem to spell the end of the Western-Russian space partnership, which began in the optimistic 1990s when American astronauts traveled to the Russian Mir space station.
Dutch robotic arm
For a long time, the collaboration in the ISS, under construction since 1998, seemed immune to all political removal. But with the invasion of Crimea in 2014, American politicians woke up with serious funding for the development of a US capsule that could take astronauts to the ISS and back. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, Americans had become painfully dependent on Russian rockets. Since 2020, the US will again be able to fly astronauts to and from the ISS itself, with the help of the Crew Dragon capsule from the American company SpaceX.
Also read: 680 kilos heavy, 11.3 meters long; this is the Dutch robot arm going to the ISS space station
A Dutch victim of the Russian-Western interconnectedness threatens to become the already troubled European Robotic Arm (ERA). That is the 11.3 meter long external robot arm for the ISS, built by Dutch Space, now Airbus in Leiden. Costs: 360 million euros, two-thirds contributed by the Netherlands. ERA was finally launched last summer, after 15 years of waiting due to technical problems through no fault of his own, aboard the Russian ISS module Nauka.
Since then, new problems have arisen when switching on the arm. According to the Russian space journalist Anatoly Zak, which relies on anonymous Russian space sources, the sanctions now make communication between the European research center ESTEC with the arm impossible. ESA and Airbus declined to comment. Philippe Schoonejans, project manager of ERA, does suggest that a solution is being worked hard. “We keep [verdere mededelingen] unless we get it OK to say what we know and plan to do for now,” he says.
Outside the ISS, the Russian-Western space cooperation seems to be a thing of the past. Two days after the invasion, Roscosmos announced the end of cooperation at ESA’s Kourou base in French Guiana, where unmanned Soyuz missiles were launched. It also ends the supply of Russian RD-180 rocket engines, the most complex part of space rockets to the US. “We can no longer supply the US with the world’s best rocket engines. Let them use something else, their broomsticks or something,” Rogozin tweeted.
The RD-180 was used for the first stage of the US Atlas missile, often used for launching defense satellites. Managing Director Tory Bruno said there are enough RD-180 engines in stock for the six planned Atlas launches.
A direct victim is the British company OneWeb, which is working on a constellation of 648 satellites that will provide internet access worldwide. The launch of a 36-satellite Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan was scheduled for March 4.
But Roscosmos staged an unprecedented piece of ‘launch pad theatre’ that day by taping the British flag of the waiting rocket during a live stream. Rogozin: “The launch crew decided that the rocket looked nicer without flags of certain countries.” After that, Rogozin announced that the launch could only go ahead if the UK transferred its stake in OneWeb to Russia, and if there were guarantees that the satellites would not be used for defense purposes. OneWeb refused, after which the Soyuz rocket was removed from the launch pad. The satellites are being left in a sealed room, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. OneWeb has suspended all launches from Baikonur, hopes to get its satellites back one day, and must look for a new rocket.
Also read: European probe is heading for Mars
This probably also applies to the Mars probe Exomars, a European Mars cart aboard a Russian lander, which should have been launched this year with a Russian Proton rocket. According to a statement from ESA this launch is now ‘highly unlikely’, and alternative options are being considered. The next launch window for a favorable trip to Mars is in 2024.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 7, 2022