The competition in space between Washington and Moscow, which began with the launch of Sputnik, has also been accompanied over time by collaboration, culminating with the International space station (Iss) – the International Space Station – in orbit around the Earth.
Despite the war in Ukraine and contrary to all expectations, The United States and Russia also continue to travel together in the direction of cooperation in space. This is the case of the power failure at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston last July 23 which prevented communications between the ISS and the mission control center on American soil.
The latest loss of contact with the ISS
Due to a scheduled upgrade to this property’s power grid, NASA’s operations center in Texas lost command communications for about 90 minutes, telemetry and voice with the station. Although it affected all mission control rooms, the interruption did not cause damage to the ISS or the crew, who continued to work on the experiments conducted daily in orbit.
Despite the geopolitical tensions caused by the conflict in Ukraine, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, he quickly offered support to NASAmaking its communication systems available to the crew and guaranteeing an operational communication channel until the resolution of the power outage.
Not an isolated case of cooperation in space
Built thanks to the joint efforts of NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), and its Japanese and Canadian counterparts, the ISS is the clearest example of how much the international community can benefit from international cooperation.
Russia, which covered about a third of the ISS’s total costs and is responsible for almost half of the propulsion needed to keep the station in orbit, has supplied some of its key components. Zvezda, Poisk and Rassvet are just some of the main Russian modules that contribute respectively to mission control, docking of Soyuz probes, and the supply of energy and communications to the ISS.
The failure, albeit temporary, has highlighted the fragility of the ISS infrastructure and the key role of collaboration in all space activities. The July event is not isolated of its kind, and to find evidence of a second malfunction just go to February 2023. On that occasion, due to an equipment failure during a system update, Houston lost contact with the ISS for about three hours, and even then the flight engineers managed to communicate with the crew only when the ISS passed over Russian ground stations.
Both failures underscore the vulnerability of critical space infrastructure in technologically advanced societies. Although originating from different errors, the power outages have once again highlighted the importance of safety in space operations and the fundamental role played by communications in all missions.
Sanctions on Russia and implications in space
Russia’s relationship with the ISS has not always been linear and characterized by a propensity for collaboration. In 2014, in response to the sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe for the annexation of Crimea, Russia threatened to terminate the collaboration in orbit. The threat involved moving astronaut training facilities to Crimea and making it impossible for the Americans to use Soyuz vehicles to get into orbit. Thus for the first time since its launch in 1998, the station’s role changed from a scientific laboratory to a key pawn in the geopolitical context. Even then it was clear that, in the absence of a strategic partner such as Russia, the United States itself would have found it difficult to continue operating on the ISS.
In February 2022, following the sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, Dmitry Rogozin, former director general of Roscosmos, stated that the country it doesn’t need to cooperate with the United States in space nor the need to continue collaborating on the ISS. In a series of tweet Rogozin also threatened to “drop” the station into the US or Europe. While providing the ISS with a component that controls and adjusts its orbit, the threat was clearly a propaganda move. As a demonstration of the strategic nature of the station also for Moscow, in fact, joint operations on the ISS continue regularly.
The ISS, during more than 20 years in orbit around the earth, was a crucial scientific and technological laboratory. However, it is important to underline that it was not designed to last forever and is expected to stop working in 2030. In light of the strategic role played by the station over the years, several space powers are planning their future activities in space by focusing on the design of similar to the ISS.
China, which abandoned the ISS in 2019, has already launched Tiangong, a space station much smaller than the ISS but more technologically advanced. Russia has not yet abandoned the ISS, but has stated that is planning its own space station which should be put into orbit before 2030. India has instead recently announced that it has entered the test phase of its space station, which should be launched in 2035. ESA, on the other hand, while strenuously supporting the ISS, is doing deal with the fact that its only channel to bring astronauts into low Earth orbit will soon close. In an effort to prepare the ground for developing new space technologies and programs, the agency released the report Revolution Space in March 2023, underlining the intention to proceed with space exploration even after the decommissioning of the ISS.
The post ISS scenario will therefore undoubtedly be characterized by a greater pluralism of actors operating in orbit with their own stations, and we will probably see the resumption of the space race. Unlike the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the powers operating in the space landscape and the technological capabilities to develop components have increased proportionally, and the challenge for the future will be to balance national ambitions with the intrinsic need for international collaboration.
Cover photo NASA