IF NASA wants to send humans to space, it has to stay friends with Roscosmos, its Russian counterpart. In turn, if Roscosmos wants to keep the International Space Station (ISS) running, it has to stay friends with NASA. But the US-Russia relationship in space has reached a critical point.
On 10 October, newly appointed NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin will meet in person for the first time. This meeting was sparked by a drill hole found last month in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked with the ISS. At present, the Soyuz is the only craft able to transport humans to the ISS, and NASA pays Roscosmos for the privilege.
Following the hole’s discovery, many Russian media outlets have reported suspicions that a US astronaut sabotaged the Soyuz. Supposedly, this would force an emergency return trip to Earth for the crew that the US wouldn’t have to pay for.
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Both Rogozin and NASA astronaut Drew Feustel, the current ISS commander, have strongly denied the rumours, but the Russian media has quoted Roscosmos insiders saying otherwise, fuelling the fire.
The talk of sabotage seems to be laying bare the cracks in the long-held ties between the agencies. “The suspicion and distrust goes to show that it’s not that healthy a relationship,” says Todd Harrison at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. “It has endured because of shared interest and mutual dependence.”
That is set to change. Next year, NASA has plans for home-grown rides to the ISS, with the first crewed launches from US soil since the end of the space shuttle programme in 2011.
“The International Space Station cannot function without an astronaut trained by NASA”
The US had never intended to rely on Russia for so long. In 2014, NASA tasked Boeing and SpaceX with building crew capsules to fly on the firms’ own rockets to the ISS. At the time, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon was meant to have its first crewed flight before the end of 2016, while Boeing’s Starliner capsule was to launch in 2017. But these ambitious projects have been plagued by setbacks.
According to a from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the firms have announced delays in at least half their quarterly status reviews since 2014. SpaceX’s first uncrewed test flight is now slated for November, and Boeing’s is due to take place sometime in late 2018 or early 2019. Crewed flights are planned for mid-2019.
Any additional delays could be a major problem because NASA has only bought Soyuz rides to the ISS until early 2020. But, in theory, the likelihood of further major delays should be falling because many parts have been built and tested, says Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.
It also helps that two horses are in the running.”The decision that NASA made to fund two separate programmes is incredibly sensible and clearly the right thing to have done, and that’s becoming even more clear now,” says McDowell.
Nevertheless, a GAO report in June found that schedules are still likely to slip and that “there may be a gap in access to the ISS” if there are any more delays.
SpaceX may be particularly at risk of missing deadlines, given the company’s many competing endeavours. Last month, CEO Elon Musk announced a deal to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on a jaunt around the moon using its huge Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is currently being developed. Musk has said he wants BFR to replace both the firm’s Falcon 9 rocket, which is planned to carry the SpaceX crew capsule, and the larger Falcon Heavy, which only launched for the first time this year.
The divided attention at SpaceX is cause for concern in NASA and the US Department of Defense, which hires the firm for many of its satellite launches, says John Logsdon at George Washington University in Washington DC. “It’s hard to plan the future use of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy when Elon says they’re going to be replaced by BFR,” he says.
If delays mean NASA runs out of pre-purchased seats before the US-made capsules are ready, it isn’t clear that US astronauts will be able to continue visiting the ISS.
At the same time, the ISS cannot function without the expertise of at least one astronaut trained by NASA in Houston, says McDowell. That doesn’t have to be a NASA astronaut: European, Canadian and Japanese crew also receive this training. But Russian cosmonauts aren’t qualified to operate the non-Russian parts of the ISS and, if left without maintenance for long enough, they will start to break down.
End of an era?
Even without this issue, a loss of US access to the ISS could result in some far-reaching political decisions being taken. “If there are no Americans on the space station, then I think at some point the US government has to make the decision of whether they pull the plug,” says Harrison. “At that point, I don’t think the Europeans or the Russians could take over, so we’d have to de-orbit the station.”
Current US budgets include plans to fund the ISS until 2024, so there has already been talk of de-orbiting it then, but we don’t yet know how to bring the space station back to Earth safely. As such, being forced into an earlier de-orbit would probably be both costly and dangerous.
If there is a delay in getting Boeing and SpaceX’s capsules flying, but it doesn’t look like it will be too long, NASA might just extend astronauts’ ISS stays to keep the US side of the station running. Normal missions last six months, but the agency has already experimented with a year-long stay. “You’re going to want to take a lot of extra sandwiches with you because you might be up there for a while,” says McDowell.
Or, with a deadline looming, NASA could just try to hurry things up. “That sort of situation would certainly light a fire under SpaceX and Boeing,” says Laura Grego at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Massachusetts. But certifying new spacecraft for human use is a difficult and vital task. “That’s not a process you want to rush,” she says.
The idea isn’t unheard of. In 2017, NASA studied the possibility of sending humans on the first flight of its Space Launch System rocket, which is designed to eventually carry out deep-space missions to the moon and beyond. The study concluded that an accelerated timeline wouldn’t be worth the added cost and risk.
“If we had to launch next month with a human, we could probably cobble something together in time, but it would be neither safe nor comfortable,” says Matthew Hersch at Harvard University.
NASA is risk-averse, so a hurried first commercial flight would be heavily scrutinised. “Crew safety is our priority, so we won’t rush anything,” says a NASA spokesperson.
The last, and perhaps most likely, option is for NASA to buy more Soyuz seats. Roscosmos didn’t respond to 91av‘s request for comment on what the agency would do should NASA make such a request.
Previously, NASA had to book its tickets three years in advance, at a cost of nearly $82 million per seat. With all the spots on Soyuz trips after 2020 having already been doled out to Russian cosmonauts, Roscosmos would have to put some of its space exploration plans aside for the benefit of NASA. That makes it likely that any additional seats on a Soyuz capsule would come at a much higher cost than before.
“If the US had to launch next month with a human, it could probably cobble something together”
Yet if all goes well for NASA, it could be a critical blow to the Russian space-flight industry. “Not having as many Soyuz launches to the station will hit their space sector pretty hard,” says Harrison. “They’re losing a critical source of cash.”
The Roscosmos budget for 2016 to 2025 is about $20.5 billion. Meanwhile, NASA’s budget for 2017 alone was about $19 billion. NASA typically bought about four Soyuz seats a year, paying Roscosmos hundreds of millions of dollars. That is one reason for Roscosmos to continue providing NASA with seats if there are any delays, says Logsdon.
Ultimately, if the US stops relying on Russia for access to space, the erosion of trust and NASA’s bigger budget is likely to bring a permanent shift. “In the next decade, I think the US-Russia relationship will change from Russia being the critical partner in human space flight to Russia being one of many partners,” says Logsdon. “I don’t think the US will get itself in this sort of dependent position again.”
This article appeared in print under the headline “Crunch time in orbit”
