New York Post By Emilee Speck 3/5/2022
Russia has lost its power over NASA and in the space business: experts
Russia continues to degrade its role in the space industry, alienating itself from international customers it has long supplied space resources to because President Vladimir Putin refused to back down from the attack on Ukraine.
Since Russia began its invasion last week, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin refused to launch a UK-satellite company’s payloads and stopped supplying Russian-built rocket engines to US customers and threatened to cut ties with its International Space Station partners, including NASA.
The most delicate ongoing space policy issue is the International Space Station.
For over 20 years, NASA and Russia worked together to build and maintain the orbiting laboratory 200 miles above Earth. The first modules were American and Russian. The first two astronauts to enter the space station when the lights were turned on were an American and Russian cosmonaut together, an intentional choice by STS-88 mission Commander Robert Cabana.
When the space shuttle program ended, the US lost its ride to space for American astronauts. It began purchasing seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for more than $80 million for nine years until SpaceX began launching astronauts under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Since Elon Musk’s company began launching Americans from Florida in May 2020, NASA had purchased fewer seats from Russia and was negotiating for a cosmonaut to launch on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon when the Ukraine invasion began.
More:
https://nypost.com/2022/03/05/russia-has-lost-its-power-over-nasa-and-in-the-space-business-experts/?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated
