An unusual scheme involving NASA, the Russian space agency and a commercial intermediary will see a US astronaut flying to the ISS in a cashless exchange intended to preserve a tradition dating back more than 20 years.
NASA normally pays about $ 90.25 million for a seat on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but the agency is increasingly reluctant to hand over these large sums of money now that its commercial crew program officially Off the ground. That said, NASA paid that exorbitant fee last October to transport US astronaut Kate Rubins to the space station, in what was speculated to be the last time American taxpayers would pay Russia for space travel.
NASA must again send an astronaut to space to “ensure that the agency keeps its promise of safe operations through a continued US presence aboard the International Space Station until the capabilities of the commercial crew are routinely available,” as the space agency explains
Since November 2000, the ISS has hosted at least one American and one Russian at the same time. In order not to break that tradition and to avoid Roscosmos having to pay its usual flight costs, NASA has entered into a special agreement with the Russian space agency and Axiom Space, a commercial company based in Houston, Texas.
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Under the new scheme, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will do just that join the Soyuz MS-18 mission, scheduled for launch on April 9 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Vande Hei will join the crew of Expedition 64/65 aboard the ISS along with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. In return, Axiom Space will return the favor by offering a seat to a Russian cosmonaut sometime in 2023.
The current ISS crew will return to Earth in April and May, and the SpaceX Crew-2 mission is scheduled for April 22. By launching Vande Hei a little earlier, NASA will “ensure a continuous presence on the station if Crew-2 is delayed the launch of the mission or an event occurs while Crew-2 is in orbit and that requires an early return, ” according to to the space agency.
NASA has needed Russia to send its astronauts to space since the shuttle retired in 2011. The agency’s commercial crewing program aims to restore this capacity; SpaceX, with its CrewDragon, has already delivered, but Boeing’s Starliner is woefully behind schedule and to contend with problems
Soyuz MS-18 is said to be a completely Russian affair. This late request and resulting settlement disrupted the Russian mission, which meant that Russian cosmonaut Sergey Korsakov became the odd man out.
“The change in crew composition came as a result of a serious request from the US”, according to to Roscosmos. “NASA did not issue its request until the end of 2020, which means that the Russian side had to change the already confirmed and approved launch program.” To which the agency added, “Roscosmos has made this decision and confirms its adherence to the Joint Agreements and the spirit of joint use of the International Space Station.”
In February, NASA publicly announced its intention to hitch a ride aboard the mission and to to provide “Similar in-kind services” instead of sending the usual money transfer to Roscosmos.
That something was in the works is no big surprise, as training photos of Novitsky and Dubrov showed they were wearing a mission patch with Vande Hei’s name on it, like Space Policy Online reportsNASA astronaut Anne McClain will then replace cosmonaut Dmitry Petelin as one backup should Vande Hei not be able to become a member of MS-18 for whatever reason.
As noted, the deal is being struck through an intermediary, Axiom Space. The private American company is currently building one crew module for the ISS, with plans to eventually launch of private astronauts into space. Details of the company’s arrangement with both NASA and Roscosmos have not been disclosed.
Like Roscosmos, Axiom is expected to arrange transport to the ISS and return to Earth, and provide critical mission support services such as training, launch prep, flight operations and landing rescue services. As these services were found to be ‘mutually of comparable value’, the contract contains ‘no exchange of funds’, per NASA. Axiom will likely use a SpaceX CrewDragon for the 2023 mission (the company recently signed an agreement with SpaceX for four launches in 2022).
This is admittedly a strange situation, as NASA secures a Soyuz seat through a middleman and the announcement comes so shortly before launch. NASA does not want to pay Roscosmos for this service, but the space agency is clearly unwilling to rely solely on a single private partner. It’s a pickle. Given all this, the unusual arrangement is unlikely to be indicative of how things will look ahead. Indeed, Russia has no real incentive to launch free US astronauts, even if that means a “free” ride aboard a US vehicle.
As for the upcoming MS-18 mission, the arriving crew will replace US astronaut Kate Rubins and two Russian cosmonauts. Vande Hei will spend six months on board the ISS, where he will conduct experiments cotton root systems Alzheimer’s disease, and a technical demo of one portable ultrasound device, in addition to contributing to our understanding of how microgravity affects the human body in the long term. Vande Hei is no stranger to space, having spent 168 days in space as part of the crew of Expedition 53/54, which he attended from September 2017 to February 2018.