Space Cooperation Highlights 200 Years of U.S.-Russia Relations
21 February 2007
Astronauts, cosmonauts lead other nations into space exploration frontier
Washington – On the same day that NASA commemorated the 45th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbits of Earth in Friendship 7 in 1962, the U.S. Department of State celebrated 200 years of U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations with a February 20 program on U.S.-Russia cooperation in space.
From the early days of spaceflight to the International Space Station, the United States and Russia, as competitors and partners, have paved the way for all nations into the frontier of space exploration.
“While countries can successfully pursue space programs on their own,” said Claudia McMurray, assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment and science, “as the Soviet Union and the U.S. did in the past and as several countries are doing now, international cooperation has a powerful logic, particularly in an era of limited funds.”
Even at the peak of the Cold War, McMurray added, NASA and its Soviet counterparts cooperated on a technical level through various data exchanges.
COMPETITION TO COOPERATION
“In exploring outer space,” said Yuri Ushakov, Russia's ambassador to the United States, “we are not only partners but rivals as well. That rivalry, that competition, however, produced brilliant results. ... A half a century ago, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, and America [responded] by establishing NASA and the launch of their own space vessels.”
In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes.
The agreement expanded cooperation in space science, earth science, satellite-based search and rescue and human spaceflight. It also led to the first joint human space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and engagement on a wide array of cooperative programs.
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, July 15-24, 1975, was the first international manned spaceflight. The mission tested rendezvous and docking systems compatibility for American and Soviet spacecraft and opened the way for international space rescue and future joint manned flights.
During this project, the first international handshake in space occurred when astronaut Thomas Stafford and cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov greeted each other after the Soyuz and Apollo docked July 19.
The Space Shuttle-Mir Joint Program, February 1994 to June 1998, included 11 space shuttle flights and seven U.S. astronaut residencies, called increments, on the Russian space station Mir. Space shuttles also conducted crew exchanges and delivered supplies and equipment.
Shuttle-Mir showed that space exploration did not have to be competitive, and helped Americans and Russians develop the expertise to build and maintain the International Space Station, the largest international science collaboration in space.
The United States, Japan, Canada, Russia and 11 countries represented by the European Space Agency have come together to build and inhabit the station, and make future space exploration possible.
SEA LAUNCH AND LAND LAUNCH
Among the projects that are important today in U.S.-Russia cooperation, said Thomas Pickering, a consultant to the Boeing Company and a former U.S. diplomat, is the Sea Launch Company, an international partnership of U.S., Russian, Ukrainian and Norwegian businesses formed in 1995 to provide reliable, cost-effective heavy-lift launch services for commercial customers.
“For years, scientists have understood that launches from the equator would produce more weight-lift capacity with less fuel burn and expense,” Pickering said.
Sea Launch is a spacecraft launch service that uses a mobile sea platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on special rockets. It has assembled and launched 24 rockets. Partners are the Boeing Commercial Space Company (United States), RSC Energia (Russia), SDO Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash (Ukraine) and Aker ASA (Norway).
“Over the years, our Russian friends encouraged us to use the same setup for land launches,” Pickering said, and Land Launch was formed in 2004.
Sea Launch Company, based in California, provides contracting and management services for Land Launch. Space International Services in Moscow provides hardware and services originating in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, in a subcontracting arrangement with Sea Launch.
Land Launch, Pickering added, “is now in a position to have launched several commercial satellites from the Baikonur space station in Kazakhstan.”
More information about Sea Launch and Land Launch is available online.
Americans in Orbit, a multimedia feature on the 45th anniversary of the Friendship 7 mission and other early spaceflights, is available at the NASA Web site.
More information on the history of U.S.-Russian relations is available on the State Department Web site.
For more information on U.S. policies, see Science and Technology and Russia.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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