NASA, Other

NASA suspends non-ISS cooperation with Russia

In a decision that is more symbolic than substantive, NASA confirmed late Wednesday that it is suspending cooperation with the Russian government, with the very large exception of operations of the International Space Station (ISS).

“Given Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, NASA is suspending the majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation,” NASA announced in a one-paragraph statement that was issued, oddly enough, through the agency’s Google+ account, rather than posted to the agency’s website. “NASA and Roscosmos will, however, continue to work together to maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station.”

The statement came several hours after a NASA internal memo leaked out announcing the halt in non-ISS cooperation. “This suspension includes NASA travel to Russia and visits by Russian Government representatives to NASA facilities, bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or videoconferences,” wrote Michael F. O’Brien, associate administrator for international and interagency relations, in the memo. While that statement said NASA was suspending “the majority of its ongoing engagements,” the O’Brien memo stated that “all NASA contacts with Russian Government representatives are suspended, unless the activity has been specifically excepted,” with ISS operations the only stated exception in the memo.

That decision, though, may be less severe than it sounds, since there’s little cooperation between NASA and Russian government agencies outside of the ISS partnership. Neither the memo nor the statement enumerated the specific programs affected by the decision. There are Russian instruments on a few NASA spacecraft, including the Curiosity Mars rover (DAN) and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LEND). An undated document on the US Embassy in Moscow’s website, apparently from some time between 2006 and 2008, lists several other minor areas of NASA-Russia cooperation in earth sciences, many of which may no longer be active. (Update: also potentially affected by the ban is US cooperation on ExoMars, the former ESA-NASA Mars program that, after NASA dropped out, became an ESA-Russian program, although with NASA still involved at a much lower level; and a joint NASA-Russian science definition team for Russia’s Venera-D Venus mission.)

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin did not sound impressed by the suspension of non-ISS cooperation between NASA and Russia. “Yet, apart from over the ISS we didn’t cooperate with NASA anyway,” he said in a tweet early Thursday.

A more serious move involving space-related efforts between the US and Russia quietly took place late last week, when the State Department announced that it “has placed a hold on the issuance of licenses that would authorize the export of defense articles and defense services to Russia,” according to a brief statement on the website of the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls. Since satellites and related components are, for the time being, still on the US Munitions List, this move would block the export of such items to Russia, including commercial communications satellites to be launched from Russian facilities.

33 comments to NASA suspends non-ISS cooperation with Russia

  • amightywind

    Yet, apart from over the ISS we didn’t cooperate with NASA anyway

    Continuing entanglement with the Russians is a huge mistake. Time to cut our losses. Let’s evacuate all parties from ISS and come up with a plan for separating the Russian sections and bringing ISS down.

    ILS has come to a predictable bad end.

    • Coastal Ron

      amightywind said:

      Continuing entanglement with the Russians is a huge mistake.

      Cutting and running is a strategy that plays into the hands of tyrants. It’s like giving in to the demands of a 2-year old throwing a fit – what you teach them is that if they keep having fits to get what they want, you will give in. Bad strategy.

      Let’s evacuate all parties from ISS and come up with a plan for separating the Russian sections and bringing ISS down.

      Boy are you capricious. If you can’t handle Earthly issues while in space, then how in the world can you be expected to manage the risks of space exploration?

      ILS has come to a predictable bad end.

      I’m glad you’re not a marriage counselor… I’d hate to see the advice you give.

      No doubt this whole situation was created and is maintained by the whims of one outlier political leader, but reacting to his actions only ensures that he will do it again in the future. And why not if we become predictable?

      This is why fully funding the Commercial Crew program is so important, so people like Putin aren’t put in charge by default of deciding the disposition of our $100B space assets.

  • Gregori

    Europe and Japan won’t be exactly happy about dunking their investments in the pacific.

    • amightywind

      Since Russia just took a bite out of Europe, I think they’ll understand. Since Russia occupies Japanese territory, they will also understand.

      • Jim Nobles

        No, they almost certainly will not go along with such a wacko idea. You are in full fantasy mode now.

        I don’t know what’s being talked about in high level geopolitical circles right now but none of it involves voluntarily evacuating the space station and then ditching it. Try to get some perspective.

  • My blog thoughts on suspending relations.

    This may be the administration using the crisis to coerce Congress into properly funding commercial crew. Once that happens, we really don’t need the Russians any more.

    Imagine where we’d be without Elon Musk and SpaceX. He should be able to fly people in two years. His Merlin engines are made in the U.S, not in Russia like ULA’s Atlas V. And although it’s not officially confirmed, recent media reports suggest the Falcon Heavy will launch Bigelow habitats by 2017, which means we’ll be able to construct entirely new stations without relying upon other nations.

    Let’s not overlook that SpaceX is bringing the commercial satellite launch business back to the U.S., launching for about one-third the cost of ULA. Russia and China can’t compete with SpaceX pricing.

    The Russian space program is in tatters. Russia needs the West to keep their space program viable. We’re about to render them irrelevant.

    • Lars

      “The Russian space program is in tatters. Russia needs the West to keep their space program viable. We’re about to render them irrelevant.”

      Indeed. Without commercial launch contracts and ISS support payments, the Russian aerospace industry will be in *dire* straits. Remember, they have been working on their next launch vehicle – Angara – for almost 20 years now. Their next crew capsule program is limping along on very limited funding.

  • Our fearless leader Jeff has been tweeting from Space Tech Expo. He just tweeted comments from NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier.

    Gerst said he foresees ISS as being the last government space station. By the 2020s, governments will lease space (pun intended) on private space stations, e.g. Bigelow. We probably won’t see multi-national stations any more, so they’ll be smaller.

    Russia doesn’t have any technology like this. Once the U.S. and the other spacefaring nations go their own way — using expandable habitats built here in the U.S. — nobody will be interested in flying with Russia any more.

    Just more evidence of the wisdom of NewSpace.

    • Hiram

      “Russia doesn’t have any technology like this. Once the U.S. and the other spacefaring nations go their own way — using expandable habitats built here in the U.S. — nobody will be interested in flying with Russia any more.”

      I’m not sure it’s that simple. I wouldn’t put it past the Russians to come up with a low-tech on-orbit habitat. It isn’t as if the technologies that Bigelow et al are using are that cutting edge. Russia actually has quite a bit of expertise in flexible structures. RKK has been working on an expandable multilayer synthetic skin space habitat structure for several years now that would be outfitted on a Progress. This was written up last year in Popular Mechanics.

      It would be interesting to parse Gerst’s words. I suspect he was referring to LEO stations (which sounds completely sensible). If there is going to be an eventual substantial habitat elsewhere in cis-lunar space, I’d be very surprised if it weren’t an international enterprise.

      The wisdom and success of NewSpace, which is largely American, reflects well on our nation. Geopolitically, the success of NewSpace is a clear case in which the United States has shown exemplary capabilities. It is remarkable how the NewSpace haters can’t quite fathom the idea that these efforts are very much American. Elon has been an American citizen for at least a decade. Our nation should take pride in them.

      • Here’s the article Hiram referenced:

        http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/news/russia-is-building-an-inflatable-space-module-of-its-own-15706708

        That said … We’ve all seen a lot of articles come out of Russia claiming they’re working on all sorts of technology that never sees the light of day.

        Here’s a quote from the article that may be the bottom line:

        Eventually, RKK Energia hopes to get a contract from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, to build the full-scale inflatable habitat.

        No Roscosmos contract, no inflatable habitat?

        • Hiram

          “We’ve all seen a lot of articles come out of Russia claiming they’re working on all sorts of technology that never sees the light of day.”

          That’s certainly true. Now, NASA is hardly immune to that kind of thing.

          But here’s a piece by Anatoly Zak that comes through with some background on the history of Russian space inflatables in the context of that from other nations. They have some history with space inflatables. RKK Energia evidently say that they are in the process of building a 1/3 scale model of the hab module for ground tests. Again, this isn’t necessarily a technology demonstrator, but possibly just a ball to throw astronauts in.

          http://russianspaceweb.com/inflatable.html

      • Neil Shipley

        Tall poppy syndrome. Oz venacular for success-envy.

    • Jeff Foust

      A clarification: Mr. Gerstenmaier spoke at the SSB/ASEB meeting in Washington, not at Space Tech Expo in Long Beach. I was following portions of the SSB/ASEB meeting by WebEx.

  • Fred Willett

    A serious question here. Do these new restrictions forbid ULA from buying RD-180 engines for Atlas V?

    • bright lights

      Over on the AmericanSpace blog they mention a bid by senators Durban and Feinstein to get language into a bill that might just end up cutting the Atlas V.

      http://www.americaspace.com/?p=56744

      • Jim Nobles

        Boy, they hate Elon and SpaceX on that site. Windy you should probably go over there and check it out.

        .

        • Neil Shipley

          Jason Rhian has it in for them. Don’t know why but if you try posting anything favourable about SpaceX or related, it’s never put up – just disappears.

          • Jim Nobles

            Okay, makes sense. I remember when SpaceVidCast disassociated themselves from Mr. Rhian due to “ethics” issues. He wasn’t able to keep his personal feelings enough out of the reporting. Sorry for off-topic chatter.

            .

          • Reality Bits

            I haven’t seen Jason post on that site for a while, I believe that he has moved onto another site (SpaceFlight Insider).

          • Vladislaw

            Jason has not allowed a single post of mine to go up on his spaceflight insider. If you so much as whisper commercial in a positive light or mention anything negative about SLS/orion your post never sees the light of day. The only posts that seem to go up are those that exclaim what a great article it is .. smiles.. rather hilarious actually.

      • amightywind

        Somehow I don’t think Lockmart, whose Atlas has 155 consecutive mission successes, which include the nation’s largest and most vital national security payloads, will go quietly.

        • Jim Nobles

          I don’t think they will either, nor do I want them to. I hope all this is to force them to somehow source an engine domestically.

          One of my biggest disappointments with the rise of SpaceX and newspace is that some of the older players didn’t say, “Yeah, well we can play that game too!” and start making their operations more efficient and bringing their prices down. I want the market to be full of efficient less costly providers. I’m beginning to think that’s not going to happen.

          Maybe oldspace truly has worked under the old system so long that they simply can’t adapt to the change. That’s not what I wanted.

          .

          • Neil Shipley

            That’s a reasonable conclusion. In addition, they would need to completely revamp their manufacturing and management operations. They’re using legacy systems, techniques, processes which have large labour components. Can’t easily change that. OTOH ESA is certainly attempting to respond in that fashion.

        • Hiram

          “Somehow I don’t think Lockmart, whose Atlas has 155 consecutive mission successes, which include the nation’s largest and most vital national security payloads, will go quietly.”

          You can get outbid quietly. Those 155 consecutive successes cost a LOT of money. If success doesn’t cost as much money, it’s hard to succeed if you’re selling the more pricey product.

          But of course, if you’re winning bids with a cheap product, there is no reason to keep it cheap if you don’t have real competition.

        • Reality Bits

          ULA just has to domestically produce an RD-180 in the US.

          As Mike Gass, ULA CEO, said about the efforts to produce a domestic RD-180 in his congressional testimony, “We’ve done that over several years, we invested hundreds of millions of dollars to prove that we have the capability to demonstrate our ability to build that exact engine.”

          So go build them. No mention about any metallurgy or coatings problem, so what is stopping them?

    • E.P. Grondine

      Hi Fred –

      Rep. Sensenbrenner insisted on safeguards when US-Russian agreements were entered into. We’ll see how things play out.

      Aside from that the Israel Boycott-Divestiture movement is going on and gathering momentum. How that will end up is another one of those political issues hanging over things.

      I think it is pathetic when the US is relying on engines by V.P. Glushko.

      My short summary of all of this is that it looks to me like ATK/Utah really screwed over Marshall/Alabama. That $8 billion wasted on Ares 1 did not go to build a US flyback launcher.

      • Mongo

        “the Israel Boycott-Divestiture movement is going on and gathering momentum”

        I don’t think so. We’ll disregard that little action in the Crimea and all the hundreds of Muslim bombings, and Muslims killing people, cutting off their heads, eating their entrails, 100s of thousands of Syrians being murdered and millions of refugees running from Assad, but lets blame the Jews. The Arabs and Palestinians are treated better and live better in Israel than in most Arab and Muslim countries and have the full rights of citizenship. There never was a Palestine-the PLO was invented only a couple decades ago. If the Palestinians needed a country, why didn’t Jordan and Syria give them the land when they held it, until 1967? Because the Muslims and Arabs hate one another more than anyone else.

        All you are doing is obfuscating the truth when you bring up such things.

        The blow back from the recent American Studies Association showed how ludicrous this boycott effort is. Its main result has been the termination of the the Abbas and Netanyahu talks.

        • Jeff Foust

          Discussion of Middle Eastern relations is off topic for this post. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping the discussion focused on the topic of the post.

    • Andrew Swallow

      A serious question here. Do these new restrictions forbid ULA from buying RD-180 engines for Atlas V?

      There is also a related question, will the current troubles result in Russia banning the export of the engines to the USA?

      Supplying engines for trips to the ISS, which is a joint Russian-US project, is one thing but for military launches!?!

  • Mongo

    I agree Jeff.

    “I think it is pathetic when the US is relying on engines by V.P. Glushko.”

    I think its pathetic that we are relying on Russian Soyuz’s or on modules and cupolas made by ESA. The US ought to maintaining its own capabilities.

  • Malmesbury

    Hmmmm

    1) 2 years supply of RD-180
    2) once the effort starts to build an American production line, there is a fair probability that the supply of Russian engines would be cut off immediately at the Russian end.
    3) 2 years to reverse engineer, build a production line and get to a state where the production line is producing good quality engines. Sounds rather tight, if anything….

    Hmmmmm

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