NASA’s acting administrator said on Tuesday that he does not expect Russian cosmonauts to launch US commercial crew vehicles to the International Space Station until next year.
A proposed agreement with Russia to ensure that the space station is always manned with an international crew is pending approval from the US government. The no-money exchange agreement has been under discussion for years by NASA and officials from the Russian space agency, but the signing of a final agreement has hit a roadblock in recent months.
Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator, said Tuesday that the draft of an “executive agreement” between NASA and Roscosmos is still under review by the US State Department.
“We are waiting for the State Department’s final signatures of the implementation agreement, and then we will deliver that draft to Roscosmos and begin negotiations,” Jurczyk told Spaceflight Now.
He said he believes NASA is about to get final State Department approval of the text of the agreement, but the time has likely passed to get State Department signatures and the agreement with Complete the Russian government in time to assign a Russian cosmonaut to a SpaceX crew. mission later this year.
Once the deal is made, a Russian cosmonaut will need to be approved to travel to the United States, have a custom SpaceX pressure suit made and basic training on the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
“I think it’s too late now to develop a suit and get into training for Crew-3,” said Jurczyk, referring to a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission scheduled for launch on October 23. it would be Crew-4. “
The Crew-4 mission is currently scheduled for launch no earlier than the first quarter of 2022.
Last November, NASA said it had submitted the draft agreement to the State Department for approval. At the time, NASA hoped to close the deal in time to assign a Russian cosmonaut to the Crew-3 mission by the end of this year.
Rookie NASA astronaut Raja Chari – a former US Air Force fighter pilot – veteran physician astronaut Tom Marshburn and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer are assigned to the Crew-3 mission. NASA has left the Dragon’s fourth seat open to a Russian cosmonaut, but that position is expected to be taken by a crew member of NASA’s astronaut corps or another international partner.
Once NASA and Roscosmos sign the final agreement, managers want every US crew to the space station to have a Russian cosmonaut on board. And any launch of a Russian Soyuz crew capsule would have a United States astronaut or other partner qualified to pilot the portion of NASA’s space station.
The agreement ensures that there is always a crew member on the space station to command the Russian section of the outpost and the US operations segment, or USOS, which includes US, Japanese, European and Canadian hardware. If the Russian Soyuz program or US crew vehicles are grounded, crew members of the other international partners can still fly to the space station.
It would also protect against a medical emergency that could force half of the space station’s crew to leave the outpost early and return to Earth. If a spacecraft had to leave the station early, the entire crew of that capsule would have to come back to Earth to make sure they don’t go into orbit without a lifeboat.
That could force all Russian or all US crew members to evacuate the space station, endangering critical parts of the spacecraft’s propulsion, life support, and control systems.
International astronauts are already flying on SpaceX Crew Dragon missions. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi launched on the Crew-1 mission – the first regular Crew Dragon flight – in November and will return to Earth next week.
Launching on Thursday, the Crew-2 mission will include Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and French-born mission specialist Thomas Pesquet, the first European Space Agency crew member to fly Dragon. They will join NASA commander Shane Kimbrough and pilot Megan McArthur on the space station for six months.
NASA relied on Soyuz spacecraft for all crew transportation to and from the station from the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011 to the start of SpaceX’s astronaut launch last year.
According to a 2019 report by NASA’s Inspector General, NASA has paid the Russian government about $ 4 billion billion since 2006 to purchase Soyuz seats for astronauts from the United States and the station’s other international partners.
With money from NASA, Russian space contractors doubled the production of Soyuz crew capsules for launches from 2009 to meet the demand for astronaut transport to the space station. After NASA’s previous bulk purchase of Soyuz seats ended in 2017, Russian officials reduced the Soyuz airfare to two flights last year.
The last Soyuz seat that NASA bought from Russia was filled by astronaut Kate Rubins, who launched on a Soyuz spacecraft last October and landed in Kazakhstan with two Russian crew members on Saturday.
NASA arranged for a new Soyuz seat on the most recent Russian crew launch on April 9, but did not pay for the ride in cash. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei launched the mission after NASA booked the seat with the help of Axiom Space, a Houston-based company that arranges flights for space tourists and plans its own private space station.
In exchange for paying for Vande Hei’s ride, Axiom gets a seat for one of its private clients on a future NASA-sponsored US crew mission.
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