Roscosmos and NASA reconnect: First high-level meeting since 2018
Photo: NASA headquarters (nasa.gov)
The Director General of Roscosmos, Dmytro Bakanov, arrived in Houston, where on July 31, he will meet with the acting head of NASA, Sean Duffy, according to Russian media and Reuters.
The media writes that the Director General of the Russian state corporation Roscosmos, Dmytro Bakanov, has arrived in Houston, Texas, for a meeting with the acting Administrator of NASA, Sean Duffy.
This is the first such meeting between the heads of the space agencies of the United States and the Russian Federation in eight years.
The negotiations are scheduled to take place on July 31. They will discuss the continued operation of the International Space Station, continuation of cross-flights, and the process of deorbiting the station.
Also, the Russian delegation plans to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, the production facilities of Boeing and SpaceX. Additionally, a meeting with the crew of the Crew Dragon spacecraft is scheduled.
As Reuters notes, the space program remains one of the few international projects in which the United States and Russia still cooperate.
In all other spheres, relations between the countries were severed after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine in February 2022.
Despite political isolation, NASA and Roscosmos continue to exchange crews for missions to the ISS. This takes place within the framework of the so-called cross-flight program, which allows maintaining a constant presence of representatives of both countries on the station.
Relations between the USA and the Russian Federation
The last meeting of the heads of Roscosmos and NASA took place in October 2018. Then, the head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, came to Russia on the eve of the launch of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. He was hosted by the then-head of Roscosmos, Dmytro Rogozin.
After the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, the USA imposed large-scale sanctions against the Russian Federation, which also affected the space sector.
As a result, most joint projects and contacts between American and Russian structures were curtailed or frozen. However, in the space sector, certain cooperation has been preserved – in particular, to support the safe operation of the International Space Station (ISS).
