US 'forced' to hitch rides with Russia to space station, says NASA chief
To catch a ride to the International Space Station, American astronauts will still have to rely on Russia, and pony up rocket fare. While US-Russia relations are strained on Earth, NASA has extended its contract with the Russian space agency for transportation to space.
In a 聽made public Wednesday, NASA chief Charles Bolden said that NASA is "forced" to聽extend its contract with the聽Russian space agency Roscosmos聽through 2017, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of about $490 million.聽The extension was prompted by budget cuts that have delayed commercial alternatives with partners such as SpaceX and Boeing, which would make transportation from America possible, he wrote.
"Unfortunately, for聽five years now, the聽Congress 鈥� has not adequately funded the聽Commercial Crew Program to聽return human spaceflight launches to聽American soil this year, as planned," Bolden wrote.
"This has resulted in聽continued sole reliance on聽the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for聽American and聽international partner crews," he added.聽A seat on a Soyuz rocket , Reuters reports.
The聽deal extension comes at聽a time of troubled relations between the United States and Russia. The Obama administration has been consistently against Russia in聽response to聽its actions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Meanwhile, Russia marked the one-year anniversary of its ban on Western foods, levied in response to those sanctions,聽by steamrolling and burning tons of contraband food in cities throughout Russia on Thursday, The聽聽reports, a spectacle that was met with fierce public protest.
NASA retired its space shuttles in聽2011, ushering in a new era of private commercial partnerships to develop transportation to get astronauts to and from the space station, which serves as a research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth with American, Japanese, and Russian astronauts aboard.聽
Bolden implored Congress to not cut funding for fiscal year 2016, a move that he said would threaten progress by private space companies Boeing and SpaceX toward building vehicles capable of carrying NASA astronauts to the ISS by 2017, which is NASA's stated goal for ending its dependence on the Russian government for transportation; he added, "only the lack of funding could hinder their progress". 聽
The NASA chief emphasized the importance of research on the space station, job creation stateside, and establishing US leadership in space exploration in this century, and said in closing,聽"It is my sincere hope that we all agree that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on others to launch humans into space."
In the meantime, US-Russia collaboration on the space front will continue.
