Ukraine War Could Ruin US-Russia Collaboration on the ISS

“People are used to leaving politics and religion behind because when you are in space you are part of a space culture where my life depends on you and your life depends on me,” he said. -she declared.

On Earth, however, tensions between the United States and Russia are at their worst level since the Cold War.

The United States is supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the West with the prospect of nuclear war in response. The areas where countries can find common ground are shrinking.

A difficult relationship

Currently, there are four American astronauts, three Chinese astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts on board the ISS.

In recent years, political tensions have threatened the shaky agreement underpinning the ISS, with some Russian cosmonauts using the station for propaganda purposes and the Kremlin threatening to withdraw from the ISS altogether.

In 2022, Russia announced that it would withdraw from the ISS in 2024 to build its own space station, but later postponed its exit until 2028.

If Russia follows through on its threats, it could mean the end of the ISS, as Russian expertise in space technology is vital to keeping it in orbit.

Amid these geopolitical jostlings, the United States and Russia are forming an increasingly tense partnership to keep the ISS running, even as they disagree on almost every other front.

“They are metaphorically, practically and legally codependent, even if some members of each camp would prefer that they were not,” Jill Stuart of Imperial College London told BI.

Fears of a conflict on Earth threatening the space station even reared its ugly head in Hollywood with the space thriller “ISS,” released in January.

The film follows Russian and American astronauts on a space mission when a nuclear war breaks out. Their respective countries order them to take control of the space station.

Politics makes its way to space

The creation of the ISS was announced by former US President Ronald Reagan, who requested in 1984 NASA create a “permanently manned space station” to which other countries would be invited to contribute.

In 1988, 15 countries agreed to participate in the project, then known as Space Station Freedom. Representatives from the United States, Japan, Canada and nine members of the European Space Agency (ESA) signed the Intergovernmental agreement (IGA) to consent to its construction.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, President Bill Clinton invited the newly formed Russia to join the project, which changed its name to the ISS in 1993.

The Soviets had long-standing expertise in aerospace technology, having launched the world’s first space station, “Salyut”, in 1971.

Since officially joining, Russia has worked closely with the United States on the ISS. Crews from both countries were part of the first month-long expedition in 2000.

But the ISS, which has long symbolized unity among nations, began to fall prey to political divisions as the post-Cold War era of optimism gave way to renewed conflict.

In July 2022, Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS unveiled a flag of the Luhansk region of Ukraine. The region was recently occupied by the invading Russian army, and this was seen as a show of support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

It was an outrageous provocation on a site where political differences were supposed to matter less than the shared quest for truth, critics said.

“I am incredibly disappointed to see the cosmonauts and Roscosmos using the International Space Station as a platform to promote their illegal and immoral war, where civilians are being killed every day,” said Terry Virts, American astronaut and commander of the ISS in 2015.

But Virts told BI that Russia’s economic woes mean that, for now, its provocations are unlikely to be a prelude to a complete withdrawal from the ISS.

“This is the only viable civilian space activity for them in the short term,” he said.

Russia is spending huge sums of money on its Ukraine campaign, with military spending accounting for 6% of GDP last year. There isn’t much left for a huge, ambitious project like building a space station.

“Their economy has gone on a war footing and they will not have the money to launch new space exploration initiatives in the near future,” Virts said.

US dependence on Russia

Under the ISS agreement, each participating country contributes to its financing. Russia and the United States, as the world’s superpowers in space exploration, bear most of the responsibility for maintaining the ship.

The habitable modules of the ISS, where astronauts live and work, are jointly owned by the United States and Russia and are physically connected.

Stuart, of Imperial College, said the way the station is built strengthens cooperation between nations who find little else to agree on.

“Even though strong words have been used on both sides since the conflict in Ukraine, in reality the agencies involved in the station, as well as the station’s hardware itself, are interdependent in a way that has up to present assured stability, if not the case.” tense, continued operations,” Stuart said.

“Over the past decades of operation, other political tensions between the United States and Russia have led to questions about the future of the ISS, but it has always weathered the storm,” he said. Stuart said.

The future of the ISS, if Russia follows through on its threats and withdraws, looks bleak. It would be difficult to get the ISS moving without Russian help, Virts said. And transporting astronauts to the station would be more difficult, because under the ISS agreement, Russia flies international teams from Baikonur. Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Greens said that while the United States could likely find other ways to transport its astronauts to the station if Russia stopped using its “Soyuz” capsules, the portion of the station maintained by Russia includes its thrusters, or the engines used to move the spacecraft.

“We need to cooperate for the basic operation of the station,” he said.

A possible solution could take the form of equipment or financial assistance from Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The private space company is worth between $125 billion and $140 billion.

Musk wrote a social media post in February 2022, which alluded to the company saving the ISS from “uncontrolled deorbit” after the head of the Russian space agency warned it could crash into the United States or Europe if ties were severed over the conflict in Ukraine, The Independent reported.

Separately, CNBC reported in August that the European Space Agency was considering using the organization’s launchers on top of Russian “Soyuz” capsules.

A new space race

While the United States and Russia continue their close collaboration on the ISS, in other parts of space, competition is intensifying.

China is quickly becoming a major power in space, challenging the dominance of the United States and Russia in space exploration and technology. China has made several unmanned moon landings, has its own space station and has developed a sophisticated commercial and military satellite program.

Competition between great powers in space is nothing new. After all, the first space race was fueled by the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and Soviet Russia.

But the era of cooperation and unity symbolized by the ISS could soon seem to be a thing of the past, experts say. For Stuart, the future will likely be defined by a growing rivalry.

“Countries have long used space activity to demonstrate their prestige, and this will continue in the near future, leading to inevitable competition and even conflict,” Stuart said.