Enlarge / Anna Kikina will be the fifth Russian woman to go into space.
Roscosmos
NASA and its Russian partner Roscosmos have officially agreed to swap seats on four upcoming missions to the International Space Station. The first missions – with a Russian on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and an American on Soyuz vehicles – will take off in September.
“Integrated crew flights ensure that there are properly trained crew members aboard the station for basic maintenance and spacewalks,” NASA spokesman Josh Finch said in a statement. “It also protects against unforeseen circumstances such as a problem with any crewed spacecraft, serious crew medical problems, or an emergency aboard the station that requires a crew and their assigned vehicle to return to Earth earlier than planned.”
As expected, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will fly alongside cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin on the Soyuz MS-22 mission, which is scheduled to launch on September 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. In addition, NASA’s Loral O’Hara will fly alongside cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub on the Soyuz MS-23 mission next spring.
Meanwhile, astronaut Anna Kikina will fly with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Kasada and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata on the Crew-5 mission in September. Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will join NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg as part of the Crew-6 mission next spring.
“The no-funds agreement includes transportation to and from the International Space Station and full mission support, including all necessary training and preparation for launch, flight operations, landing and crew rescue services,” Finch said.
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The announcement came on Friday morning shortly after the Kremlin announced that Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin had been removed from his post. Former Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov will replace Rogozin. During his four-year tenure, Rogozin had an extremely rocky relationship with his Western counterparts and always seemed more interested in poking fun at Russian President Vladimir Putin than working to further the space station effort.
The timing of Friday’s announcement was coincidental, a source said. However, NASA will not mourn the loss of Rogozin, who has become increasingly belligerent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has made numerous threats about Russian involvement in the station. NASA officials said they maintained a good working relationship with other senior administrators at Roscosmos, which helped them move forward with the swap deal despite Rogozin’s troubled leadership.
Integrated crews are the norm throughout the International Space Station program, and they are an important symbol of cooperation between Russia and the United States despite geopolitical tensions. Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was the first Russian to fly on an American space vehicle, riding aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle in 1994. A year later, NASA astronaut Norman Taggard flew to the Mir space station on a Soyuz vehicle.
After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, NASA had to rely on Russia to transport the crew to the space station. Although Russia ended up charging NASA about $90 million for the space, the country fulfilled its end of the bargain by providing reliable transportation. However, NASA no longer needs Russia for this as Crew Dragon comes online as an operational spacecraft. Kikina will become the first Russian to launch an American vehicle other than the Space Shuttle.
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