The European Space Agency (ESA) has suspended lunar missions to Russia for the time being. Russia previously threatened to crash the International Space Station. Former ISS resident André Kuipers looks back and ahead at the Russian-Western cooperation in space. “It is almost inevitable that the ISS will stop.”
With unprecedented harsh words, Dmitry Rogozin, the boss of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, took to the West on Twitter last February. He even threatened to crash the International Space Station – nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize – on Europe or the United States.
While America announced last December that it wanted to keep the largest space station that ever orbited the Earth in the air until at least 2030, an extension of the current contracts (which run until 2024) does not seem realistic. Rogozin stated this month that Russia no longer wants to cooperate in the joint project as long as sanctions from the West are aimed at Moscow.
Conversely, the European Space Agency announced this week that it would end cooperation with Russia in three space missions to the moon that were being developed together. The plug had already been pulled from the European-Russian connection of ExoMars, a Marslander that had to leave this year and whose planning is now in doubt. It makes the International Space Station one of the last collaborations between Russia and the West, at least for the time being.
NEMO Kennislink talks to André Kuipers about the future of the space station, his time with the Russians and his 'cosmic view' on the earthly tribal struggle.
That was spicy language from the boss of the Russian space agency.
“Yes, that was very childish and that does not belong to a statesman. Fortunately, Josef Aschbacher and Bill Nelson, directors of the European and American space agencies respectively, did not participate. They didn't add fuel to the fire, they didn't threaten back.”
But is there any truth to those Russian words?
“There are still thousands of people working together to keep the space station operational. That happens in Houston, Hutsville, Moscow, Munich and Tsukuba in Japan, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week.”
“In that sense, life on board the ISS continues. The American Mark Vande Hei just returned on March 30 with a Russian capsule (Russian state media briefly suggested that the Russians would leave the American in space - ed. ). I also wonder what the cosmonauts would have done if they had been ordered to leave him there. You don't leave someone without a 'lifeboat'."
You flew to the space station twice with a Russian rocket and capsule. Your colleagues were Russians, you trained in the country for years. How was that collaboration?
“I attended classes at the university in Moscow and was in Star City (the astronaut training center Zvjozdny gorodok) for extended periods of time. – red. ). I learned Russian. In the beginning I had to get used to the gruff of the Russians, which started with the officer at the passport control. But I got into it slowly. We got to know each other better and if they notice that you are 'one of them', if you don't act haughty, if you participate, have a drink, then it's great fun. I got on really well with them.”
Flowering period
As an astronaut, Kuipers experienced a heyday of Russian-Western space travel. While America and the Soviet Union outdid each other on every front in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the relationship subsequently thawed, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the time was ripe for a long-term and intense collaboration between the two superpowers and later also Europe, Japan and Canada.
Kuipers remembers the time before the end of the Cold War, when as a doctor in the service of the Air Force he did exercises at Leeuwarden Air Base. They simulated that the Soviet Union had dropped a nuclear bomb on Friesland. “That was our enemy back then, and if you had told me then that I would later fly a Russian spaceship, I probably wouldn't have believed you,” he says.
In 1998 Kuipers became a member of the astronaut corps of the European Space Agency (ESA). He focused on a space shuttle flight and a long training stay in Houston, USA. But then a phone call came:he would fly with the Russians. “I even got into the left seat of the Soyuz capsule,” says Kuipers. “That's where the copilot sits who (co-)steers the capsule. In the shuttle you are in fact a passenger, in the Soyuz you really do something. In that sense it is much more fun.” Kuipers flew to the space station for the first time in 2004 for a stay of eleven days, in 2011/2012 he spent more than half a year in space.
Has it always been a breeze with your Russian colleagues? What did you do with difficult political themes?
“We weren't talking about politics. Cosmonauts travel all over the world, from the United States to Japan, and speak English. You could talk to them about anything, for example about science, but if you started talking about Putin, they would shut up. They didn't want to talk about that, that was dangerous territory, at least it was risky for their career.”
But you can't keep up such an embargo on political themes for half a year if you live in the same 'house'?
“Oh, yes. Of course I talked about it with friends and family. It is wise not to discuss potentially sensitive topics such as politics, sex, and religion with colleagues. These are things that everyone should know for themselves.”
Isn't it a shame that you should avoid these kinds of themes with colleagues you see so much?
"It's a waste. But if you want to keep the atmosphere good, because you're on each other's lips for so long and you depend on each other, then it's simply a wise choice.”
Do you know how political matters were thought in Russia?
“I did notice that some people were caught up in propaganda. For example, in 2014 after the downing of flight MH17. I met the head of the office there in Star City, a good acquaintance of mine. He was a great guy and he could take a lot. But I noticed that he was angry that we in the Netherlands thought that Russia was responsible for the downing of that plane. I was shocked. There was so much evidence, in fact the whole world said it was different, but he believed his own news. There were already cracks in the relationship, which is a shame.”
Do you still speak to your colleagues?
“I haven't spoken to them since the war in Ukraine started, but we meet annually with the Association of Space Explorers, the astronauts' association. I expect to speak to them later this year.”
Era without space station
In 1998, the first modules of the space station, the Russian Zarya and the American Unity, will be linked together in space. With each launch, the station grows a little, over the years it has grown into a major country house. In the end, including solar panels, it takes up about a football field. It is now equipped for the long-term stay of seven people, but for shorter periods there are sometimes more people on board.
Can the space station be split into a Russian and Western part?
“That is very difficult, because then you can no longer do everything, such as avoiding dangerous space debris that orbits the Earth. The engines with which that happens are attached to the Russian part. The flywheels that keep the station in a stable position are in the American part, but you also need rocket motors to 'despin' them now and then. If you can't do that, then that's the end of it, the space station could tumble.”
“You also need engines that push the space station up. It sinks about a hundred meters every day, so otherwise it would eventually crash. The Russians are responsible for this, but you can come up with a solution by, for example, sending a space capsule with extra fuel to the space station. There had been plans for some time to do this with an American freighter.”
“The Russians can theoretically disconnect and continue on their own. But I wonder what the future of Russian space travel is. The country is stuck in the past and there is no money for new things. They would like to work with the Chinese, but I don't know if they want to. With this war, the country is mainly cutting its own fingers.”
Is the West doing better?
“In time, we will stop using the ISS and move towards commercial initiatives, such as that of the American company Axiom, which provides manned flights to the space station with a commercial SpaceX rocket. That trend should accelerate. That is difficult, because it remains space travel in which much is postponed and delayed. Will those commercial alternatives be ready in 2024? I have my doubts. We may well have a space station-less era. In the West that is, because the Chinese currently also have their own inhabited space station.”
“The European Space Agency must also look for a new partnership for the launch of its Mars rover ExoMars. The targeted missile and lander were Russian. Maybe we should go to the US, which has participated in this project before. Or we have to do it with European missiles. It's a real shame, because this mission was already two years behind the original launch schedule."
You know better than anyone what the earth looks like from a distance, without borders, without countries. You have often said, we live on a fragile sphere in an infinite and hostile space. We have to be careful with that. Does this conflict give that thought an extra dimension?
“First, you do see limits. For example, by farming on one side of the border, as in Israel and Egypt. The former division between East and West Berlin is also still visible, as they use a different type of street lighting on both sides. Human activity is fully visible, such as the artificial palm islands in Dubai, the Afsluitdijk, mining, salt extraction, airplane stripes and also acts of war. Think of smoke plumes from oil fields that are on fire. That is confrontational.”
“You can see from space that we can't get out of here if we screw up. Yes, maybe there will be a few people walking around on Mars, but that's about it. As an astronaut you get a strong realization:this is all we have. A sphere that you can fly around in an hour and a half. In addition, most places on our planet are desert or mountainous. There is only a limited amount of fertile land.”
“It made me a bit claustrophobic, not just for myself, but for humanity as a whole. When I looked past that brightly colored earth towards the universe, it was as if the planet shrank and the universe hung around it like a black blanket. This is what the so-called overview effect does with you. The realization of:ah, this is all!”
“This has been described by many of my colleagues. It would be nice if everyone could see this. That you feel:we are in the same boat.
And now we're blasting our boat.
“It means that we have to solve all the problems here on Earth together. We simply have nowhere else to go.”
Featured by the editors
MedicineWhat are the microplastics doing in my sunscreen?!
AstronomySun, sea and science
BiologyExpedition to melting land
Do you think:people, what are we doing on earth?
"Anyway. I am from Amsterdam and I am Dutch. When I started working for ESA, I also started to feel 'European'. I traveled the world for work and realized that I am a citizen of the world. Eventually I even went off that world, into space. What are you then? A kind of universal being with the feeling that we are part of something much bigger. When I came back to the Netherlands I sometimes thought:gosh, what are we navel-gazing here.”
“A tribal struggle is primitive. We live together on a beautiful planet. Up there in space you have to work with everyone to survive. I think space travel is a great example of how we should do it on Earth. It went in the right direction.”
In 2013, you received a medal from Vladimir Putin. You joined the Order of Friendship of Russia. Where is that medal?
“It's in a moving box. For about five or six years. That was a medal from the country for the good cooperation we had. Unfortunately, it has now lost its shine.”