SpaceX will fly Russian cosmonauts to the ISS under new NASA deal with Russia's space agency
Business InsiderNov 18, 2022
The Facts
On Thursday, SpaceX launched its Crew Dragon capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — it held three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut aboard. The Falcon 9 rocket lit up the sky at lift-off, accelerating the capsule to a speed of 17.5K mph (28,160 km/h) before it escaped Earth's gravity and went into orbit. The mission is aimed at replacing the current crew at the International Space Station (ISS).
Mission crew members include leader and retired Navy submariner Stephen Bowen, a former research scientist at MIT Warren "Woody" Hoburg, Andrey Fedyaev, a space rookie retired from the Russian Air Force, and Emirati Sultan al-Neyadi, a communication's engineer and the first person from the Arab world to make a months-long stay at the ISS.
The Spin
Narrative A
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked a backlash among Russia's space agency partners. However, despite the political turmoil on Earth, the US and Russia have been able to continue to collaborate at the ISS. Elon Musk's SpaceX Crew Dragon revived NASA's human spaceflight capability and is now the guarantor of US-Russian cooperation in space.
Narrative B
The ISS stands as one of the few remaining areas where Russian and American cooperation is still operating successfully. However, if Russia doesn't act soon to reform its oppressive regime and begin governing within the bounds of international law, there isn't much of a future for its role within the space program beyond the ISS.