Now the partnership on the ISS is going through the hardest test. Seven crew members of the 66th expedition — four Americans, two Russians and a German - have to turn a blind eye to the political split on Earth in order to continue cooperation. Their lives depend on it, writes Vanity Fair.
Entire regions of Ukraine plunged into darkness. But in the dark, a bright white dot lights up over the heads of Ukrainians and Russians for a few minutes — it is clearly visible. Everyone sees the International Space Station (ISS). This is not only the third brightest point in the sky, but also the fruit of perhaps the most expensive, technically and politically complex partnership in the history of mankind.
Now this partnership is going through the hardest test. Seven crew members of the 66th expedition — four Americans, two Russians and a German - have to turn a blind eye to the political split on Earth in order to continue cooperation. They have no other choice: although they almost certainly see the scars of the conflict with their own eyes, they have to live and work together. Their lives depend on it.
According to NASA, the ISS orbits the Earth in an hour and a half. In total, there are 16 of them per day at an altitude of about 400 kilometers — this is called low Earth orbit. A station of 16 modules the size of a football field flies at a speed of about 27 thousand kilometers per hour (that's about eight kilometers per second). It may seem that it is too fragile and will not survive, but every day the ISS sees 90% of humanity and all its suffering.
It turns out that the world is literally bursting at the seams, and the brave ISS is working as if nothing had happened — and has been a symbol of unshakable international partnership for almost a quarter of a century. Despite the almost complete rupture of relations between the United States, Europe and Russia after the conflict in Ukraine, former NASA chief Scientist James Green (he retired in January, but remained an adviser), assures me in an email: "We continue to support space cooperation with Russian colleagues along with other international partners. This is necessary for the safe operation of the ISS." Pay special attention. It is not hope that speaks, but pragmatism - and this is crucial for the survival of humanity.
At first it seemed that the conflict would destroy the ISS. When the United States and Europe announced the first of a long series of sanctions against the entire Russian economy, stopping technological exchange, the irascible head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, noticed that it was thanks to the Russian ISS rocket that it did not fall to earth and flew around space debris and satellites. In a string of angry tweets, he warned: "If you stop cooperation, who will save the ISS from uncontrolled de-orbiting and falling on America or Europe?". The message is very clear: cooperate or a space projectile will fall on you. Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (the twin brother of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, also a former astronaut and the wife of former member of the House of Representatives Gabby Giffords), in response to Rogozin, raised his own storm on Twitter, and besides in Russian: "Can you find a job at McDonald's if McDonald's still exists in Russia?" (In fact, this week the global fast food giant announced that it was suspending work in Russia.) Soon, space debris only increased: Rogozin called Kelly a "jerk." Kelly responded by saying that he was behaving "like a child."
Maya Cross, a professor of political science and international relations at Northeastern University in Boston, has written a lot about diplomacy around the ISS and other space programs and found Rogozin's threats ridiculous. In an interview with News@Northeast, she said: "It all comes down to the most ridiculous scenario." If the parties stop cooperating, she noted, the ISS will really collapse, taking everyone on board with it. "The space station exists thanks to cooperation."
Meanwhile, the crew members froze in tension — and this is not the same as neighbors in a tiny Manhattan or Moscow apartment, only in space. "Don't forget, astronauts and cosmonauts are really good friends at the moment," Cross explained. "They spent all this time in space cramped. They owe each other their lives and had been training together for months, if not years, even before the flight. They know each other's languages. They eat each other's national dishes. That's why the ISS will always remain a beacon of hope, even when there is a conflict on Earth: these astronauts are really very close. When they're up there, they're good friends." (The volume of the space station is just under 400 cubic meters, or about four semi-trailers. And it weighs 450 tons).
The ISS will not be able to operate without the general contribution of the crew members. Its systems need regular maintenance and periodic repairs. Spacewalks are a common thing. And you also need to cook food and get rid of waste. "The crews cooperate on board the Soyuz during flight and emergency exercises—" experienced cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky told Smithsonian magazine shortly after the previous escalation after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. - The rest of the time, everyone works according to their own plan and schedule. Of course, we try to have dinner together, discuss current affairs, watch TV shows and movies, but, alas, not every day."
We didn't manage to ask the ISS crew, but they definitely had a unique point of view on the events in Ukraine. In the 2012 video, the commander of the 33rd expedition, American Suni Williams, gave the earthlings a tour of the station and showed the dome with windows. "It's like a glass-bottomed boat," she said. "You're sitting here as if glued — our planet is in the palm of your hand from here."
Surely the attention of the crew of the 66th expedition is focused on Ukraine - as well as the rest of humanity. Although we don't know what exactly is visible from the ISS.
After the September 11 attacks, the then commander of the ISS mission, Frank Culbertson, wrote an open letter to friends and family and told them what was visible from space. In the book "How the World is Changing" by David Friend from Vanity Fair, it is told that Culbertson saw smoke from the collapsed twin towers. "And, I felt that our country was attacked," he recalls. Culbertson did not see the attack itself, but he was shocked to the core, writes Friend. In the logbook, Culbertson, the only American on the ISS at that time, wrote: "There are no words what it feels like to be the only American outside the Earth at such a moment. The feeling that I should be down there with all of you and somehow help is irresistible."
Space has been a safe haven for a long time — Americans and Russians have learned to get along with each other. The historic "handshake in space" in 1975 between NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts was the first step towards ending the Cold War. The very idea of the ISS as a joint brainchild of a number of countries arose in the Clinton administration - partly to reduce the costs of a permanent American presence. In 1993, the White House accidentally received a facsimile letter from the then leadership of Roscosmos with a proposal to combine space programs. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ISS seemed not only symbolic, but also a very real cooperation. Since then, NASA has been using the Cold War-era Russian Soyuz workhorses to deliver crews and cargo to the ISS and remove waste. And astronauts together explore the consequences of weightlessness, climate change on Earth and engage in other peaceful activities.
But politics gets stuck into their work every now and then. Space passions were already boiling over Russia's position on Ukraine. In 2014, when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian Crimea, a number of Russian politicians called for ending cooperation with NASA in response to relatively mild US sanctions. Russia even threatened to block access to the ISS for American astronauts.
The ISS continues to play its role in Earth politics. Before going on a flight to the ISS in 2014, Crimean Anton Shkaplerov, the commander of the current crew of the 66th expedition, paid a sensational visit to his homeland as part of the Russian space program. Although the exchange of technologies has decreased after Putin's annexation of Crimea, sober calculation prevailed in Moscow and Washington, and Roscosmos announced that it would continue cooperation with NASA until the planned dismantling of the station - recently its service life was extended until 2031.
It is noteworthy that along with the United States and Russia, even Ukraine is contributing to the work of the ISS - even in the conditions of the most serious crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Russia relies on the know-how and equipment of the Ukrainian rocket industry. The first stage of a number of missiles, including the American Antares, is being developed and produced by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk. Now this city of rocket men in the south of central Ukraine is considered an important target of Russian troops.
However, the space station still orbits the Earth. It is supported by Russian and Ukrainian missiles and American, Japanese and European technologies. At the same time, NASA bears the lion's share of the costs. Thanks to the ISS, citizens of 18 countries have been in orbit. The ISS is a small, fast-moving point of light that billions of people see in the current darkness. If the states manage to keep the ISS in orbit despite the "hot" war and icy relations, even now there is a glimmer of hope that we will learn to cooperate on Earth too.
As astronaut Culbertson noted, looking from the ISS at the place where the twin towers once stood, "tears flow differently in space."
Marc Wortman
