Russian Invasion of Ukraine Degrades its Role in Space Industry, Holds OneWeb Launch Hostage

By  //  March 6, 2022

WAR IN UKRAINE EFFECTS SPACE INDUSTRY ON THE SPACE COAST

In November 1998, five NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut were assigned to the STS-88 mission, scheduled for an early December launch, and above, take time out from their busy training agenda for a crew portrait. Seated in front are Sergei K. Krikalev, a mission specialist representing the Russian Space Agency (RSA), and astronaut Nancy J. Currie, mission specialist. In the rear, from the left, are astronauts Jerry L. Ross, mission specialist; Robert D. Cabana, mission commander; Frederick W. Sturckow, pilot; and James H. Newman, mission specialist. (NASA image)

Russia was scheduled to launch a batch of internet satellites this week for OneWeb, whose manufacturing facility is located on Merritt Island. However, after the Soyuz rocket was rolled to the launchpad in Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Roscosmos said the launch would not happen unless OneWeb met its demands, essentially holding the spacecraft hostage.

(FoxWeather.com) – Russia continues to degrade its role in the space industry, alienating itself from international customers it has long supplied space resources to because President Vladimir Putin refused to back down from the attack on Ukraine.

Since Russia began its invasion last week, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin refused to launch a UK-satellite company’s payloads and stopped supplying Russian-built rocket engines to U.S. customers and threatened to cut ties with its International Space Station partners, including NASA.

The most delicate ongoing space policy issue is the International Space Station.

For over 20 years, NASA and Russia worked together to build and maintain the orbiting laboratory 200 miles above Earth. The first modules were American and Russian.

The first two astronauts to enter the space station when the lights were turned on were an American and Russian cosmonaut together, an intentional choice by STS-88 mission Commander Robert Cabana.

FIRST INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION COMPONENTS: The U.S.-built Unity connecting module (right) and the Russian-built Zarya module are backdropped against the blackness of space on December 4, 1998 in this 70mm photograph taken from the Space Shuttle Endeavour. After devoting the major portion of its mission time to various tasks to ready the two docked modules for their International Space Station (ISS) roles, the six-member STS-88 crew released the tandem and performed a fly-around survey of the hardware. (NASA image)

When the space shuttle program ended, the U.S. lost its ride to space for American astronauts. It began purchasing seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for more than $80 million for nine years until SpaceX began launching astronauts under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Since Elon Musk’s company began launching Americans from Florida in May 2020, NASA had purchased fewer seats from Russia and was negotiating for a cosmonaut to launch on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon when the Ukraine invasion began.

Rogozin has threatened to pull out of the ISS altogether and ended on-orbit science activities between cosmonauts and their international astronaut counterparts.

University of Central Florida space policy expert Roger Handberg said Russia has lost its upper hand.

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OneWeb, a global communications network company, has a 100,000 square foot satellite manufacturing facility on Florida’s Space Coast at Exploration Park, just south of Kennedy Space Center. (OneWeb image)
The International Space Station is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). (NASA image)
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