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Ukraine War Threatens Space Cooperation with Russia

#1
Yazata Offline
The European Space Agency is particularly impacted.

They have been launching Russian Soyuz rockets from the European launch site at Kourou in French Guyana. But that's being stopped. I believe that the next scheduled Soyuz launch from Kourou was to be two European Galileo navigation satellites around the beginning of April.

And there's the European ExoMars program that proposed to deliver a European Mars rover to Mars using a Russian lander, all launched atop a Russian Proton rocket. It was supposed to launch during the Earth-Mars launch window this year (2022) when both planets are in suitable positions in their orbits. (They come around about every two Earth years. Last was 2020 when Perseverance launched.) But it seems unlikely to happen. The ESA says that they are looking at other options, but that seems unlikely if they need not just a rocket but a lander as well. Europe's new Ariane 6 might be able to launch it. If not there are obviously American rockets that can. It will take some payload redesign to make it compatible, but that's pretty straightforward. The Lander is going to be the problem. It will take the Europeans years, maybe the better part of a decade to design and build their own. So the ExoMars program is effectively dead.


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#3
stryder Offline
Oneweb was right to suspend it's launch. Russia originally claimed it could of still gone ahead but attached a bunch of demands, the reality is/was if they had given into those demands, there was no guarantee the launch would of gone without a hitch, so they were best suspending it.
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#5
Yazata Offline
(Mar 7, 2022 02:20 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: https://twitter.com/NASAWatch/status/150...LeNiN-r41w

You beat me to posting that, SS.

I also notice that the twitter page belonging to Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos (the Russian space agency) has totally changed its look. Rogozin is now sporting a military uniform and his twitter homepage features a photo of ICBMs.

It isn't a good look for a civilian space agency, Dmitry.

https://twitter.com/Rogozin

I just tried to go to Roscosmos' Russian webpage, but it isn't responding. So the information war seems to be underway. A lot of Russian government websites seem to be unreachable.

If they do detach their ISS segments, it may or may not render the Russian side non-operational. The US side has all the giant solar panels and supplies electicity to both sides. The Russian side on the other hand provides the propulsion that periodically gives the space station a little boost to fight orbital decay caused by the very thin atmosphere up that high. 

Rogozin taunted NASA by asking who would prevent the ISS from burning up if Russia left. And Elon replied by posting this:

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[Image: FMe6n6cWYAUqonR?format=jpg&name=small]


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497370602075734021

And when asked about this, NASA's Kathy Lueders said: "Northrop Grumman has been offering up a reboost capability, and you know, our SpaceX folks are looking at can we have additional capability."
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#6
Yazata Offline
When Russia invaded Ukraine and the US imposed sanctions on Russia, the Russians cut off sales of Russia's very good rocket engines to the United States. And Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin taunted the US saying that without Russian engines, maybe Americans will fly to space on their broomsticks.

(Rogozin is always good with a quote. That's where the "broomstick" thing started)

American broomstick - (Photograph by nasaspaceflight.com's nathan Barker of the Axiom-1 launch):


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[Image: FP1YbD9XsAAawr7?format=jpg&name=small]

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#7
C C Offline
(Apr 9, 2022 06:29 AM)Yazata Wrote: When Russia invaded Ukraine and the US imposed sanctions on Russia, the Russians cut off sales of Russia's very good rocket engines to the United States. And Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin taunted the US saying that without Russian engines, maybe Americans will fly to space on their broomsticks.

(Rogozin is always good with a quote. That's where the "broomstick" thing started)

American broomstick - (Photograph by nasaspaceflight.com's nathan Barker of the Axiom-1 launch):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FP1YbD9XsAAa...name=small

As noted prior, loss of RD-181 engines will put Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket in jeopardy, which suffers from the double whammy of the 1st stage being built in war-battered Ukraine. Officials say they have enough Antares stages to fly two more supply missions to the ISS for this August and next April. Then "the company will need to find another ride to orbit for its Cygnus cargo spacecraft".

But Boeing's troubled Starliner will elude (for once) yet another curse due to ULA apparently having enough of the Russian engines in stock to finish the Atlas V's remaining missions before it retires and is replaced by the Vulcan Centaur.

However, Russian techs will no longer service the stored engines -- but ULA doesn't seem too worried: "ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno has said the company has been using the engines in its Atlas V rocket for years and has enough expertise in house to handle any issues that might arise with its engine supply."
- - - - - -

Rocket Launch: May 2022 ... ULA Atlas V Boeing CST-100 Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 (UNCREWED)
https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/launc...d-boeing-2

U.S. Space Force multi-spacecraft mission postponed, Boeing Starliner test flight next on ULA’s launch schedule
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/03/11/bo...-schedule/
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#8
Yazata Offline
(Apr 9, 2022 04:41 PM)C C Wrote: As noted prior, loss of RD-181 engines will put Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket in jeopardy, which suffers from the double whammy of the 1st stage being built in war-battered Ukraine.

I don't know what Northrup Grumman is going to do with Antares. Maybe they can find alternative engines and another manufacturer to replace Ukrainian Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash. But that will take a long time. So it looks to me like Antares is toast.

Interesting article on the future fate of Ukraine's surprisingly strong space industry. The Russians haven't targeted it so far, presumably because they want to take it over intact. But its future depends on the outcome of the war at this point. The Ukrainians have hopes that it will survive and even that it grows by filling the void left by sanctions against Russia in the world space-technology market.

https://www.space.com/ukraine-mighty-spa...literation

Quote:Officials say they have enough Antares stages to fly two more supply missions to the ISS for this August and next April. Then "the company will need to find another ride to orbit for its Cygnus cargo spacecraft".

I believe that Cygnus is more or less launcher-agnostic. It can ride any rocket that's capable of lofting it and that has the right fittings and interfaces. Falcon 9 could probably lift it, as could ULA's new Vulcan.

Quote:But Boeing's troubled Starliner will elude (for once) yet another curse due to ULA apparently having enough of the Russian engines in stock to finish the Atlas V's remaining missions before it retires and is replaced by the Vulcan Centaur.

Unfortunately, the Vulcan is to be powered by Blue's BE-4 engine, which reportedly has been experiencing development delays. The first Vulcan was supposed to have flown last year, but it's been pushed back to this year (maybe).

So the Ukraine war is making waves that are being felt all over, directly and indirectly.
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#9
Yazata Offline
Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin isn't pleased with our hero Elon

https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk...n-official

He sent this statement to Russian media

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1523462998081572864

Here's the English translation


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[Image: FSRud5iWUAEn0pA?format=jpg&name=small]



Perhaps thinking of all the Russians and Ukrainians who have suffered strangely exotic poisonings (oftentimes in London for some reason: radioactive polonium! rare nerve agents! Russian spies have been watching too many James Bond movies. It's not like that kind of stuff can't be traced back to its source. Why not just overdose your enemies with fentanyl?), Elon says that if he dies under mysterious circumstances, "it's been nice knowing 'ya"

Upon which Elon's mom tweeted that wasn't funny. And Elon said sorry, he'll do his best to stay alive.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1523465632502906880

https://twitter.com/mayemusk/status/1523478931587837954

The thing that really steams Rogozin might have been that when Russia tried to jam the thousands of Starlink terminals that Elon sent to Ukraine, it only took SpaceX a day to defeat their jamming attempts. As of now, the Russians have been unable to jam or hack them.

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-s...per-2022-4

David Tremper, Director of Electronic Warfare for the Office of the Secretary of Defense told the high-profile C4ISRNET conference that the countermeasure employed by Starlink was "fantastic," adding: "How they did that was eye-watering to me." Tremper said the US has a "significant timeline to make those types of corrections," adding: "There's a really interesting case study to look at the agility that Starlink had in their ability to address that problem."
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#10
Yazata Offline
As noted in the Ukraine War thread, Dmitry Rogozin has been removed as Roscosmos Director. This probably shouldn't be viewed as a demotion and it's likely that Rogozin will rise to an even higher position. He's somebody that Vladimir Putin trusts.

But what does this mean for Roscosmos? Rogozin is being replaced as Roscosmos Director by Yuri Borisov. So who is this guy?

It seems that he has more of a technical background than Rogozin (a degree in computational mathematics from Moscow State U., plus lots of military training schools). Prior to taking over Roscosmos, he was Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Space Industry. Prior to that he was Deputy Minister of Defense. He has 20 years of military service.

So it looks to me like putting Borisov in charge of Roscosmos might indicate that the civilian space program will be more closely aligned with the Russian military in the future. It will be interesting to watch how that turns out and whether Roscosmos turns into something more like a Space Force.

Frankly, the Russian space program really needs a shakeup. But I'm not really hopeful about aligning Roscosmos more closely with the military, while at the same time the US space program is being shaken up bigtime by "new space" entrepeneuriship that has already delivered reusable rockets and has the science-fictionish Starship under development. To say nothing of Blue Origin, Rocketlab (whose neutron will be a reusable Soyuz-class rocket) and all the others like Astra and Relativity Space.

Russia doesn't have anything like that. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Borisov
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