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WASHINGTON – A NASA astronaut will fly on a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station in April, as the agency confirmed a special arrangement to secure a seat on the Russian spacecraft.
NASA announced on March 9 that Mark Vande Hei would join the Soyuz MS-18 mission crew at the station, starting April 9. He will join Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrovnik on the mission, staying on the station for six months.
Vande Hei will make his second trip to the space station. He was part of Expedition 53 and 54 crews, spending 168 days at the station from September 2017 to February 2018. He served as backup to Kate Rubins, the NASA astronaut who flew to the station on Soyuz MS- 17 last October, with Novitsky and Doubrov, the other alternate members of the crew.
The announcement came a month after NASA released a purchase synopsis declaring its intention to secure a seat for the Soyuz mission, which at the time had an all-Russian crew consisting of Novitsky, Dubrov and Sergei Korsakov. NASA said at the time that it wanted the seat to minimize “the risks associated with any disruption of the presence of American crew members on the ISS” in the event of a problem with the commercial crew vehicles, and that it would obtain the seat by “providing similar in-kind services” rather than a direct purchase from Roscosmos.
Roscosmos, in his own statement on March 9, said he had received a “serious request” from NASA for the seat. “NASA did not express its request until the end of 2020, which means that the Russian side had to modify the already confirmed and approved launch program,” he said. “Roscosmos has taken this decision confirming its adherence to joint agreements and the spirit of joint use of the International Space Station.”
When NASA released the solicitation in February, NASA did not announce who would occupy the seat, and NASA officials declined to identify the astronaut in subsequent briefings, citing limitations on providing information. during the current market. However, rumor has it that Vande Hei was the astronaut who would be affected if a deal was made for the Soyuz seat. Images released last month by Roscosmos showed Novitsky and Dubrovnik training for the mission, wearing flight suits that had a Soyuz MS-18 mission patch that also included Vandei Hei’s name.
In a separate March 9 statement, NASA said it has signed a contract with commercial spaceflight company Axiom Space, which will provide NASA with the headquarters for this upcoming Soyuz flight. NASA, in turn, will give Axiom a seat for a future commercial crew mission to the station, likely in 2023.
“Since the services are deemed to be of comparable value to both parties, the contract does not contain any exchange of funds,” NASA said in the statement.
NASA had not previously revealed that it was working with Axiom Space, but the company, which organizes trade missions to the ISS and plans to install private modules there, has reportedly been the intermediary between NASA and Roscosmos. An Axiom official declined to comment on how the company secured the Soyuz seat. An industry source familiar with the deal, speaking in the background, said the company bought the Roscosmos headquarters as part of a “purely commercial” deal.
NASA’s decision to seek the seat through a third party, and to do so within weeks of launch, raised eyebrows in the space industry. Even NASA’s approach to announcing the deal was unusual. The agency issued a standard press release announcing the divestiture of Vande Hei, promoting it on the home page of its website. The Axiom contract was not mentioned in this release, but rather mentioned in a separate statement posted elsewhere on the NASA website.
NASA’s rush to secure a Soyuz seat has also caught the attention of some members of Congress. Representatives Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) And Brian Babin (R-Texas), respectively senior members of the Plenary House Science Committee and its space subcommittee, sent a letter to NASA last month requesting details on “existing NASA agreements and future plans to access the International Space Station.” “
The agency has long insisted on its desire for “mixed crews,” with NASA astronauts continuing to fly on Soyuz missions and Roscosmos cosmonauts flying on commercial vehicles. These seats would be exchanged between NASA and Roscosmos.
Having a NASA astronaut, or an astronaut from Canada, Europe or Japan, on every spacecraft going to the station “protects us from all kinds of contingencies,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for exploration and human operations, during a March 1 briefing on SpaceX Crew-2’s upcoming commercial crew mission, now scheduled to launch on April 22.
NASA, however, has yet to strike a deal with Roscosmos on the seat swap. “We are working on the capacity, and we will put in place, the international agreements that will allow us to fly our crew members on a Soyuz and to fly their crew members to Rocsomos on one of our two suppliers. crew, and move forward into this new era, ”said Lueders. “This gives us the most robust logistics strategy.”
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