The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced on Wednesday, Aug. 5 that the agency will stick with Russian space rockets for transportation to the International Space Station (ISS).
The decision of the agency to turn to Russia's services is brought about by budget cuts that have caused commercial US space flights to suffer from delays, NASA said. The contract will specifically be lengthened until 2017 and this extension will cost the US about $490 million wrote Charles Bolden, NASA chief, in a letter to the Congress.
NASA had looked at initiating US space flights by the year 2017 through its Commercial Crew Program; however, the budget proposal devised by both the House and Senate for fiscal year starting on Oct. 1 cannot push the said plans. Working with the budget set for the program would only mean further postponements and higher expenses, Bolden wrote. The said letter was submitted to the leaders of the congressional committees that are in-charge of NASA.
"Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress ... has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned," Bolden wrote. With this, the resulting situation is that US had to pursue its continuous exclusive dependence on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as the staff move vehicle for US and international partner agencies.
In 2011, NASA decided to stop the operation of its space shuttles. From then on, the agency has been collaborating with private space vehicle companies such as SpaceX and Boeing (BA.N) to transport space crew to and from the ISS, which is a huge space research laboratory situated 250 miles above the Earth. ISS is said to be worth $100 billion.
The extension of contract with Russia entails US taxpayers to allot $80 million per seat on a Soyuz spacecraft - something that occurred in the midst of Washington's action of increasing the measures against Russia due to its activities in Ukraine.
A striking contrast observed as NASA extends its contract with Russia is the ban of importing Russian rocket engines for military satellite purposes, as per the Congress. Specifically, the ban involves the RD-180 engines used in United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rockets, as influenced by Russia's association with Ukraine. Nonetheless, the congressional ban does not apply to missions outside of the military.
