WASHINGTON – NASA announced on February 9 that it wants to get a seat for the next Soyuz mission to the International Space Station, which starts in just two months, to ensure a US presence at the station in case of delayed commercial crewing.
In a summary of the acquisition released on February 9, NASA said it wants the seat for the next Soyuz mission, as it reduces the risks associated with any disruption in the presence of the U.S. crew member on ISS, which can be caused by problems with commercial crew vehicles.
There are no known issues with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, one of which is currently captured at the station for the Crew-1 mission. The agency said January 29, the next such mission, Crew-2, is scheduled to launch on April 20, which could return the Crew-1 mission in late April or early May. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is now scheduled to take a test flight to the station no earlier than September, following a second unmanned test launched on March 25.
“Experience has shown that new launching features can experience unexpected delays or problems in maintaining initial schedules,” NASA noted in its summary description, referring to commercial crew vehicles as US Crew Vehicles, or USCV. “Even without delaying the next launch of the USCV to ISS, an unforeseen disconnection from the USCV may occur due to unforeseen circumstances.”
NASA has long expressed a desire for ‘mixed crew’, with US astronauts continuing to fly on Soyuz vehicles, while Russian cosmonauts fly on a commercial manned spacecraft, leaving at least one American and one Russian on the station, if Soyuz or a commercial crew. vehicles be grounded for a long period of time. Those seats would no longer be bought.
“We look forward to the next crew rotation on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission, and we want to ensure that we can maximize the use of the station and limit any risk by flying a US astronaut on the upcoming spring Soyuz by services in kind, ”said Robyn Gatens, acting director of the ISS at NASA headquarters, in an agency statement on the submission.
As she noted, NASA does not plan to acquire the Soyuz seat, as has been done in the past. “In consideration of this complementary crew transport service, NASA is considering providing similar services in kind,” the summary said. NASA did not disclose what these ‘in-kind services’ would be, although the summary is entitled ‘International Space Station Seat Scholarship’.
The Soyuz mission in question, Soyuz MS-18, was launched around April 10. The Russian space agency Roscosmos has assigned three Russian astronauts – Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergei Korsakov – to the mission, making it the first Russian. Soyuz crew in more than two decades.
One of the three cosmonauts will have to be removed to make way for a NASA astronaut. In particular, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei was spotted with the designated Soyuz MS-18 crew, indicating that he may be preparing to go on the mission. Vande Hei was the backing for Kate Rubins, the NASA astronaut who launched in October 2020 on the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft to the ISS. Novitsky and Dubrov were also backup staff for the mission.
Roscosmos told Russian news agency TASS on February 10 that he expected to ‘formalize relations with the partners on this April flight’, but did not elaborate on what the terms of such an agreement would be.