Geopolitical tensions won't keep an American astronaut and two Russian
cosmonauts from returning to Earth together as planned this month.
NASA's Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov have
long been scheduled to come home from the International Space Station aboard
a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30. And that remains the plan, despite
the strain that Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine has placed on Russia's
many space partnerships.
"I can tell you for sure: Mark is coming home on that Soyuz," Joel
Montalbano, the manager of NASA's International Space Station program, said
during a news conference today (March 14). "We are in communication with our
Russian colleagues; there's no fuzz on that."
The March 30 event will proceed like other Soyuz returns, Montalbano added.
Vande Hei, Dubrov and Shkaplerov will touch down on the steppes of
Kazakhstan. About 20 NASA employees will be waiting there to help assess
Vande Hei's physical condition — he has spent nearly a year in microgravity,
which can be very hard on the human body — and bring him back to Houston,
where NASA's human spaceflight program is centered.
Today's press conference served primarily to preview a spacewalk that NASA
astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari will perform outside the orbiting lab
tomorrow (March 15). But Montalbano opened the briefing by discussing "world
events" — namely, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24,
and its various impacts.
The invasion has spurred the United States and other nations to impose new
economic sanctions on Russia. Russia and its federal space agency,
Roscosmos, have decried those sanctions and pulled out of several
longstanding partnerships in response.
For example, Roscosmos announced late last month that it was halting
launches of Russian-built Soyuz rockets from Europe's Spaceport in French
Guiana. And in early March, the agency said it would no longer sell Russian
rocket engines to American companies.
Such moves led to some speculation that the International Space Station
program, in which Russia is a key and founding partner, may be in trouble as
well. But Montalbano said that the orbiting lab is operating as usual
despite the issues on the ground.
"We're not seeing any impacts [from] what's going on around us," he said.
"We're aware of what's going on, but we are able to do our job to continue
operations."
He also said that the invasion has not compromised morale or professionalism
among the seven astronauts — four Americans, two Russians and one German —
currently living on the station.
"They continue to operate, you know, above all this work, and there's really
no tensions with the team," Montalbano said. "They've been trained to do a
job, and they're up there doing that job."
He also stressed that the International Space Station and its various
systems were designed to be highly interdependent, so it wouldn't be easy to
replace the jobs done by a key partner, should one choose to leave.
For example, docked Russian Progress cargo vehicles periodically boost the
station's altitude, to keep it from being pulled down too much by
atmospheric drag. A Cygnus freighter, which is built by American aerospace
company Northrop Grumman, will soon perform its first reboosting thruster
fire. But it will do so in concert with a Progress burn, Montalbano said.
"So while the Cygnus spacecraft will do the reboost, the Russian thrusters
on the Progress will be active and helping control attitude [orientation],"
he said. "The thrusters on the Cygnus spacecraft are not powerful enough to
go ahead and do attitude control during that reboost."
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Space & Astrophysics
Just put Dragon capsules in every docker of the ISS
ReplyDeleteHe may get back to Earth doesn't necessarily mean he's going to make it home
ReplyDelete