Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Russia says it may abandon Space Station by 2020 over Ukraine conflict

Country will also forbid US GPS stations within its borders in protest of sanctions.

Endeavour on STS-134 taken from Soyuz TMA-20 in May of 2011.

On Tuesday, Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced that the country would not cooperate with the US on the International Space Station (ISS) after 2020 despite the fact that the US was hoping to use the ISS until 2024. Rogozin also said that Russia would no longer sell its NK-33 and RD-180 rocket engines to the US for military purposes. RD-180 rocket engines are used in the United States' Atlas V launch vehicle for a variety of cargoes including US military payloads.

Finally, Rogozin said that the US will have to cease operations of its 11 GPS sites within the country on June 1 unless the two nations can come to an agreement before then. After the June 1 deadline, Moscow says it will permit three months of negotiations, but if there's no agreement, the 11 stations “will be permanently terminated,” the Russian government-funded site RT wrote.

Backing out of ISS

These measures are in response to US sanctions on Russia and its top officials, which were imposed as a response to Russia's actions in the ongoing Ukraine crisis. The US says Russia is backing separatists, and Russia says the Ukrainian government is “coup-imposed” and illegitimate.

The situation with NASA began in early April, when the space agency's Headquarters issued a statement saying that all interaction with Russia must be ceased immediately except for communications pertaining to the operation of the ISS. NASA does not currently have a launch vehicle that can service the ISS, so all crew is taxied to and from the orbiting spaceship via Russian vehicles. NASA does have a human spaceflight launch vehicle in development, but it won't be ready for prime-time until 2017. The US currently pays Russia about $60 million for every astronaut it flies up to the ISS.

On Tuesday, Rogozin noted that Russia will likely pull out of the ISS in six years, effectively halting all US involvement in the project too. “We currently project that we’ll require the ISS until 2020,” he said, according to RT. “We need to understand how much profit we’re making by using the station, calculate all the expenses, and depending on the results decide what to do next.” Rogozin added that “a completely new concept for further space exploration” was in the works. Later, Rogozin tweeted, “On May 19th on the eve of Russia-China Summit we'll discuss prospective projects of our bilateral cooperation in space with our partners in Beijing.”

No rocket engines for sale

After the early April directive to stop communications with Russia, NASA still permitted the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, to purchase the RD-180 rocket engines that it uses to launch Atlas V rockets carrying military satellites. NK-33 rocket engines were also still available for import from Russia.

In May, SpaceX told a court that it thought ULA was getting preferential treatment from the US government. The company complained that it never had a chance to bid for ULA's contract and noted that the majority of the launch vehicles that were produced, “use RD-180 rocket engines manufactured by NPO Energomash, a corporation owned and controlled by the Russian Government.” The court then issued an injunction against the import of such rocket engines.

Although the injunction was later dissolved, it looks like Elon Musk's company will be getting its way after all, although not via the route it may have wanted. “Russia is ready to continue deliveries of RD-180 engines to the US only under the guarantee that they won't be used in the interests of the Pentagon,” Rogozin tweeted on Tuesday. In a government briefing, Rogozin wrote, “We’ve repeatedly warned our colleagues at the political and professional levels (via the Federal Space Agency) that sanctions are always a boomerang. They always come back around and are simply inappropriate in such sensitive spheres as cooperation in space exploration, production of spacecraft engines, and navigation, not to mention manned space flights.”

While the Russian space agency is in a position to hamstring certain aspects of NASA's operations, Russia's own agency has suffered many high-profile accidents and is reeling from the US' plan to halt exports on high-technology items, The Telegraph reported. “These sanctions are out of place and inappropriate,” Rogozin said, according to the paper. “We have enough of our own problems.”

As for the US' GPS stations in Russia, Rogozin tweeted today, “Roscosmos (RUS Fed Space Agency) stands ready for talks with the US on equal-footed cooperation and on deploying GLONASS stations in its territory.”

Update: This post originally said that SpaceX asked for an injunction against Russian rockets imported by ULA, but in fact the company was less explicit than that.

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