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After the United States bought a seat on a Russian spacecraft to send a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station, Russian Space Agency chief Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin claimed that US space flight was still “unstable “.
From 2011 until last year, the United States relied on the Russian Soyuz launch system to send its astronauts to live on the ISS, as America did not have its own capability. In May 2020, Crew Dragon, a reusable spacecraft manufactured by Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX, took two Americans to space for the first time on a US-made vehicle in nine years.
However, despite this progress, it looks like NASA will still need Moscow’s help.
Revealed by Roscosmos on Wednesday, at the end of 2020, the Americans requested a place for astronaut Mark Vande Hei on Soyuz MS-18, which was due to travel to the ISS on April 9. According to a press release, the request was made very late and discontinued. Russian flight program, but the company accepted it as a means of “Confirms its commitment to joint agreements and the spirit of joint use of the International Space Station.”
“The tradition of international crews, which has existed for more than twenty years, will continue again,” said the statement.
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Prior to 2011, there was an agreement between Russia and the United States to share seats on each other’s spacecraft. Last year, NASA announced it would negotiate with Roscosmos to bring back this crossover system. However, according to Rogozin, this latest deal is not an exchange.
“Flights to the ISS are unstable”, Rogozin wrote on Facebook. “There was an urgent need for them to find insurance and send their man to our ship, to make sure their segment on the space station was not left unattended. The talk about the seat exchange has nothing to do with it ”. He clarified, noting that the deal was made with Axiom Space, a NASA entrepreneur and a private space company that plans to eventually sell human space flight experiences to tourists wishing to visit the ISS.
“It’s convenient for them and we don’t care. We will invest the product in new developments. “
In 2014, while serving as Deputy Prime Minister, Rogozin joked that the United States should use a trampoline to send its astronauts into space after sanctions targeting the Russian space industry. In 2020, after SpaceX’s success, Musk joked, “The trampoline works!”
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However, Musk was not to have the final say. Following the latest US request for a seat, Rogozin wrote on Facebook: “Apparently the trampoline is not performing well.”
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