MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti's political analyst Andrei KISLYAKOV)
Russia has been flying ISS (International Space Station) resupply missions and rotating its crews for more than 18 months in a row. Surely enough, the ISS program had to be revised considerably, with the concerned parties scaling down numerous scientific experiments and minimizing ISS crews, as well. The ISS life-support system began to malfunction, with the orbiter's small crews coping with such technical problems rather successfully each time.
All manned ferries, as well as space trucks, used to arrive on schedule. At the same time, Russia's political leadership, as well as its space-industry big shots, had repeatedly noted the need for more money, which would make it possible to build additional Progress space trucks and Soyuz ferries. However, the US side kept mentioning a purely political reason, which, in Washington's opinion, prevented it from subsidizing Russia's projects within the ISS-program framework. I'm talking about the 2000 Iranian non-proliferation act here. It's an open secret that US authorities suspect some Russian companies of leaking missile technologies to Teheran.
Still it seems this act has done a disservice to the US Administration, Congress and NASA. In its August 25 issue, The Washington Post wrote that the afore-said act doubted US involvement in the ISS program after April 2006.
You see, a US-Russian agreement, which was signed eight years ago, made it incumbent on the Russian aerospace agency to provide 11 Soyuz spacecraft free of charge for flying Russian cosmonauts and US astronauts to the ISS. Russia will fulfil such commitments 18 months from now. The eleventh Soyuz ferry will lift off in October 2005, shaping course for the ISS. It will remain docked with the orbiter for six consecutive months, playing the part of a rescue pod and returning to Planet Earth in April 2006. The Russian Federal Space Agency will subsequently demand that NASA pay for its services.
Anatoly Perminov, who heads the Federal Space Agency, said not so long ago that the United States must reimburse Russia for Soyuz flights, if it wanted to use these spacecraft in the future.
However, NASA is unable to do so because of that anti-Iranian act, which expressly forbids the US Government to pay Russia for the ISS program, unless the President assures Congress that Russia no longer provides Iran with any missile technologies whatsoever. NASA would virtually lose access to the ISS cluster, unless this problem is solved. Incidentally, the United States has already invested more than $30 billion into the ISS-construction program. US space shuttles still remain grounded; and no one knows when their flights will be resumed. The United States is to commission a new space-transport system at least eight years from now. Consequently, NASA has no alternative but to reserve seats aboard Russian spacecraft.
