NASA said Wednesday that it was suspending most contacts with Russian space
agency officials, underscoring just how rapidly the Russian-American
relationship is deteriorating in the wake of the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and hinting at further ramifications that will go beyond previous rifts.
The one exception, NASA said, would involve operations of the International Space Station, the primary space collaboration between the two countries.
Otherwise, the extent of NASA’s break in relations is broad and includes “travel to Russia and visits by Russian government representatives to NASA facilities,
bilateral meetings, email, and teleconferences or video conferences,”
Michael F. O’Brien, the agency’s associate administrator for
international and inter-agency relations, wrote in an email to top NASA
officials.
Over the years of collaboration, the Russian-American partnership in
space has continued largely immune to the geopolitical ups and downs
between Washington and Moscow, and as recently as a few weeks ago
officials expressed optimism that would still be the case, with the NASA
administrator, Charles F. Bolden Jr., saying, “Right now, everything is
normal in our relationship with the Russians.”
But as the confrontation over Ukraine
intensifies, it became untenable for the Obama administration to
continue sending NASA officials to Russia or hosting their space agency
officials in the United States as if all were normal, even as Washington
cut off trade talks and military cooperation and threw Russia out of
the Group of 8 industrial nations.
Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel has also directed the Air Force to review the use
of Russian engines in rockets that send American military satellites
into orbit. The Atlas 5 rockets, now produced by a joint venture of
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, have been built for years with Russian-made
RD-180 engines. American officials are exploring the consequences of
possible supply interruptions.
Still,
the administration was not going so far as to cut off all cooperation,
especially just a week after sending a NASA astronaut to the
International Space Station along with two Russian cosmonauts in a
Russian capsule. Further measures could seriously jeopardize the
American space program.
Since
the retirement of the space shuttles, NASA astronauts get their rides
into orbit aboard Russian Soyuz rockets at a cost of up to $70 million a
seat. NASA is financing commercial companies to develop rockets and
spacecraft to start carrying astronauts as soon as 2017. At a
congressional hearing last week, Mr. Bolden said the program, called
commercial crew, was the “critical need” for the human spaceflight
program.
The
new restrictions are similar to ones that limit what NASA is allowed to
do with China because of worries, particularly by Representative Frank
R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, that China would take advantage of
collaborations to copy American technologies. Under those rules, NASA
cannot host any Chinese citizens.
The
decision to suspend the relationship with the Russian space agency is
unusual for several reasons, not least because keeping the space
enterprises alive has long been a symbol of Washington’s commitment to
an apolitical working relationship with Moscow. Breaking it, some
government officials have feared, would invite the Russians to retaliate
by suspending nuclear inspections under the new Start treaty - inspections that have continued despite the differences over Ukraine.
But
the Obama administration’s decision was made easier by the dwindling
nature of the nation’s space program. Grand plans for international
space programs have largely withered, as the space shuttle program has ground to an end. “There’s a sense that we don’t need the
space relationships the way we once did,” one senior government
scientist said, “because we don’t have as much going on in space.”
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