US not ready for a solo space ride

When US President Joe Biden announced wide-ranging economic sanctions against Russia following its attack on Ukraine, he mentioned the penalties would “degrade their aerospace industry, including the space programme”. To this, Russian space agency director Dmitry Rogozin replied: “Perhaps President Biden is out of the loop, so explain to him that correcting the station’s (International Space Station) orbit and corrections to avoid conjunctions with space junk ... is made possible exclusively using the engines of Russia’s Progress MS cargo ships.” 

The Roscosmos chief warned, “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an unguided de-orbit” and asked if Washington wanted to threaten India and China with the “possibility of a 500-tonne structure falling” on them. 

So, will the ISS crash into India or China, if the ties between Roscosmos and Nasa are snapped? Nasa sought to assuage the concern: “The new export control measures will continue to allow the US-Russia civil space cooperation.”

Notwithstanding Nasa’s assurances, the ties between the two space agencies are now extremely strained. Following the American sanctions, Russia has decided to stop supplying rocket engines to the US. “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks,” Mr Rogozin said. He noted his country has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the US since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles, which are crucial to the launch of Department of Defense payloads and Nasa missions.

The West’s and Russia’s space programmes are entwined and they won’t be easily unwound. Roscosmos and Nasa are key partners in the ISS programme, besides the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The ISS is divided into two orbital segments — American and Russian. The US and Russia keep the football field-sized science laboratory continuously staffed with astronauts and cosmonauts, with the roles of each segment mutually dependent on the other — ranging from life-support systems to thrusters that keep the ISS in orbit. The Russian segment is responsible for guidance, navigation, and control of the entire complex. 
 

Also, Russia’s Progress MS cargo craft provide periodic orbit-raising boosts for the ISS, to ensure that it doesn’t sink too low into Earth’s atmosphere. But Nasa is looking to catch up: The newest version of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule — launched last month —includes ISS boost capabilities (Nasa lacked this capability since the retirement of its space shuttle in 2011). Still, the American space agency is far from self-reliant in this aspect.  

From 2011 to 2020, the US relied solely on Russia to fly astronauts to the ISS. According to a 2019 Tass report, Nasa purchased $3.9 billion worth of seats from Russia to transport its astronauts to and from the ISS since July 2011. Soyuz rockets, which first flew in the 1960s, are the go-to family of spacecraft to reach the space station. Besides the US, these ageing but reliable Russian rockets have attracted customers, such as the European Space Agency and private firms.  

But this scenario is fast-changing now: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has already sent four crews to the ISS; Boeing’s Starliner reusable spacecraft, too, is in the queue.  Also, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed his company would stop the ISS from crashing into Earth if Nasa ended ties with Roscosmos, but there is no proof of his firm having such expertise.

Another bottleneck in space exploration for the US is building workhorse rocket engines. Two American-made rockets rely on engines purchased from Russia as the main sources of propulsion. United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Northrop Grumman’s two-stage Antares rocket (its first stage is built and assembled in Ukraine) use RD-180 engines. With Russia deciding to stop engine supplies, Nasa is in a fix.

But an alternative is being looked at. Vulcan Centaur — which is currently in development and is slated to replace Apollo V — uses Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine. Another concern for the US and its space-faring allies is the future of the ISS itself. Roscosmos hasn’t renewed its role beyond 2024. Running the space station without Russia's support can be a costly affair. And if space exploration ties between Washington and Moscow are snapped, the space industry will be “confronting the very real possibility of a space station gap”, according to Voyager Space President Jeff Manber (quoted as saying by CNBC).

Last year, Nasa awarded $400 million contracts for early development for three private space stations. But any such space laboratory is still at least five years away; such a gap would mean ceding the control of Earth’s lower orbit to the Chinese, who already have a space station in the development stage.    

The Russian-American space cooperation — which started with the first Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 that saw American and Russian capsules dock in Earth orbit — withstood the Cold War and several other geopolitical differences between the two nations, and the ISS has been a shining achievement. Would the space station now become the last remnant of that partnership? Hopefully not.