FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Russia and U.S. Still Enjoy Cooperation in Space Science, as Soyuz Launches Crew to ISS

March 14, 2019 (EIRNS)—Despite the many disputes, cooperation between the United States and Russia in space continues. Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations, William Gerstenmaier, discussed space cooperation between the two countries, Roscosmos press service told TASS today.

“The conversation took place yesterday. They talked about the future of the International Space Station and further cooperation plans, pointing out that the NASA and Roscosmos groups continue to work and discuss cooperation and current pressing issues,”

Roscosmos said. Roscosmos and NASA “hear and understand” each other as far as the future of the ISS goes, but no final decision has been made yet whether to extend the station’s operation as “everything is under consideration.”

This evening, Rogozin and Gerstenmaier together watched the successful launch of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which will deliver Russia’s Alexei Ovchinin and NASA’s Nick Hague and Christina Koch to the ISS tomorrow.

Furthermore, Russian and U.S. scientists are in talks on the creation of a lunar navigation system similar to GLONASS and GPS, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Yury Balega told TASS.

“In the framework of studying the Earth’s natural satellite, U.S. colleagues suggested developing a joint navigation system around the Moon, similar to GPS or GLONASS, so that all participants in Moon exploration projects can use it,”

Balega said during a visit to NASA headquarters.

The RAS delegation, led by its President Alexander Sergeyev, is currently in the United States on a working visit, where they visited NASA and also signed an agreement with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on cooperation in the sphere of scientific, engineering, and medical research.

Balega reported that the delegation discussed programs for exploring the Moon and Venus with NASA.

“Our American partners said that they consider the Venus program [to be] predominantly Russian-led and think that Russia’s contribution to it should thus stand at 70-80%. We talked about different options of exploring Venus’s atmosphere, including launching a flying apparatus—a drone—into the high layers of Venus’s atmosphere, in order to study its chemical composition,”

Balega said. He further said that “it is very important that we agreed to hold two brainstorming sessions on both Venus and the Moon in Moscow. The session on the Moon will take place in the Spring of 2020, and the one on Venus—in the Fall of this year.”