Rome, March 18, 2022 – La war in Ukraine divides minds and cuts off relations and collaborations with Moscow, but seems to be an exception the International Space Station (iss) where others have come this evening three Russian astronauts. An arrival greeted with hugs and smiles from the other cosmonauts already on board. When in fact the navetta soyuz it hooked up to the ISS and the hatch opened, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov they were warmly welcomed by their compatriots Anton Kaplerov e Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, from the German Matthew Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Americans Raya Chari |, Thomas Mashburn, Kayla Barrow e Mark Vande Hi of NASA. The new crew members will spend 195 days on the ISS and will return to Earth on September 30th.
In reality, with the exception of the Space Station, collaboration with Russia has now crumbled. Especially with regards to Europe with all its member states, including Italy. New alliances are being prepared and, if at the moment it is really early to understand what Russia will want to do, Europe and Italy are definitely looking to United States.
“It is a very important moment, in which Europe is a solid partner of NASA”, said the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), Josef Aschbacher, after the decision of the ESA Council to suspend ExoMarsthe mission it was supposed to lead Europe and Russia on Mars. For Italy, which plays a very important role in the mission, it is a question of “moving forward immediately” and “very quickly”.
For Europe “cooperation with NASA is an option” and we look to Lunathanks to the agreements that ESA had previously signed with NASA for the Artemis program intended to bring man back to the Moon, with the supply of Orion service modules for the future space in the lunar orbit Gateway.