NASA and Roscosmos continue negotiations for seat exchanges for the ISS

On board the International Space Station operations continue normally after the problem at Soyuz MS-22 which forced to change future plans. Despite everything astronauts and cosmonauts are not in danger of life and so it was “only” necessary to reschedule some returns and departures to allow a safe shift of the crew. NASA And Roscosmos however, the seat swaps that began in the second half of last year will continue.

This strategy has the dual purpose of allowing the US and Russian space agencies to always have at least one spacecraft available to reach ISS in case of need (and without disbursement of additional money). In the case of the US side, in the coming months, the new Boeing CST-100 Starliner capsule could also arrive (after testing with a human crew) so as to guarantee a backup for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

NASA, Roscosmos and the International Space Station

As we had already written in the past, a major problem related to the failure of the Soyuz MS-22 was to ensure a safe return in the (extremely unlikely) event that the ISS must be abandoned due to a catastrophic failure. Although this is a remote probability, this cannot be underestimated in Space. Initially it looked like that Frank Rubio (NASA), Sergey Prokopyev (Roscosmos) e Dmitry Petelin (Roscosmos) could return aboard MS-22 but things changed shortly after.

With an announcement on the official blog in the second half of January 2023, it was reported that Rubio moved his seat inside the Crew Dragon currently docked at International Space Station. This means that, if necessary, with Crew-5’s Crew Dragon, Frank Rubio would also be included in addition to Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, Koichi Wakata and Anna Kikina. SpaceX’s capsules are certified by up to seven members at once, but this configuration was never intended. Petelin and Prokopyev, on the other hand, should return with the MS-22 (which, albeit damaged, would be a better place than an ISS in an irreversibly critical phase).

At 8:07 on February 26, 2023 (Italian time) there will be the launch of the Crew-6 mission. On board will be Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg for NASA, UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Andrey Fedyaev cosmonaut. The exchange of seats, despite international tensions, seems to continue. The US space agency would like to continue this strategy in the next few years. After Kikina, Fedyaev will be the second cosmonaut to fly aboard a Crew Dragon.

With the re-entry of MS-22 uncrewed and MS-23 to be launched uncrewed to accommodate the returning cosmonauts and astronauts plans have changed. In particular, it is a question of postponing the launch of a future crew (Soyuz MS-23) to Soyuz MS-24 until this autumn.

While between NASA And Roscosmos All things considered, things seem to be going well, ESA he announced which will not carry astronauts aboard China’s Tiangong space station. To speak is Josef Aschbacher (director general of ESA) who declared how “for the moment we have neither the budget nor the political support, shall we say, or the intention to commit to a second space station; which means to participate in the Chinese space station”.

In the past, ESA and CNSA astronauts have collaborated on common experiences for possible new future missions. The same astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti had participated six years ago in a mission to Yantai (in China). One possibility is that China’s support for Russia is a political obstacle to such partnerships, while China is “cut off” from collaborations where NASA is present due to the Wolf amendment. How the situation will evolve is still complex to define.