Cosmic Irony: Russians and Americans Cooperate Every Day—On the Space Station (2024)

The lights have gone out in many parts of Ukraine as Russia’s war ravages the land and its people. But in the darkness, an easily visible, unwavering point of white light will sweep over the heads of Ukrainians and Russians alike for a few minutes most nights, like a cue ball shot across the heavens. If unaware of the light’s source, Ukrainians may fear it is yet another lethal Russian weapon seeking to rain its wrath down on them. But people in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mariupol—and in Moscow, Washington, D.C., and virtually any other city on Earth for that matter—are catching sight of the International Space Station (ISS), the third brightest object in the sky, not to mention one of the most expensive, technical, and politically complex multinational partnerships ever undertaken.

That partnership is facing its most dire test right now. Inside the ISS, the seven crew members of what is denoted as Expedition 66—four Americans, two Russians, and a German—must ignore the violence and political rupture going on below them and continue to cooperate. They have no choice: Even as they can almost certainly see evidence of the war with their own eyes, they must live and work together. Their lives depend on it.

According to NASA, the ISS orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, 16 times a day, at an altitude of some 240 miles above the planet, a height known as low-earth orbit. Nearly as long as a football field, the 16 modules that make up the space station, might appear too delicate to survive while hurtling along through space at roughly 17,150 miles per hour (that’s about five miles per second). Each day, the ISS passes over approximately 90% of humanity and all our collective travails.

In a very real sense, then, as the world comes apart at the seams, the plucky ISS continues to operate—as it has for almost a quarter century—as an enduring symbol of international partnership. Despite the near complete rupture in U.S. and European relations with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, James Green, NASA’s chief scientist until he retired this past January (he now serves as an adviser to the space agency), insists in an email to me, “We continue to have our space relationship with our Russian cosmonaut colleagues [that] remain[s] the same, just like all our other international partners. This is necessary to maintain the ongoing safe operation of the ISS.” And that last statement is worth noting. It’s a message not of hope but pragmatism, and that might yet be essential to human survival.

At first, it looked like the war might really take the ISS down. Shortly after Russia’s onslaught, when the U.S. and Europe announced the first of multiple sanctions against Putin’s government, his cronies, and the nation’s economy, including limits on technology exchanges, Dmitry Rogozin, the blustery head of Roscosmos, Russia’s space program, pointed out that a Russian rocket—operated by two onboard cosmonauts—was responsible for keeping the ISS from crashing down to earth and on a path that avoids space debris and satellites. In a series of angry tweets, he warned, “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled de-orbit and fall into the United States or Europe?” His message about the scientific endeavor was clear: Remain our partner or risk the possibility of a fiery reentry of a dangerous projectile. The retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (twin brother of Arizona senator Mark Kelly, the ex-astronaut spouse of former Representative Gabby Giffords) fired back at Rogozin’s Twitterstorm, in Russian no less, telling Rogozin, as reported by the Daily Beast, “Maybe you can find a job at McDonald’s if McDonald’s still exists in Russia.” (This week, in fact, the fast-food behemoth announced it was suspending operations at its Russian outposts.) The space junk escalated. Rogozin’s response was to reportedly dub Kelly a “moron”; Kelly, in return, called Rogozin “a child.”

Mai’a Cross, an Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Boston’s Northeastern University, has written extensively about diplomacy surrounding the ISS and other space programs. She finds Rogozin’s warnings laughable and in an interview with News@Northeastern said, “This boils down to a ridiculous scenario.” Without all sides continuing to cooperate, she noted, the ISS would indeed come crashing down, taking all aboard with it. “It is impossible for this space station to exist without teamwork.”

Meantime, the crew members remain tight—and not simply as the zero-G equivalents of roomies in a small Manhattan or Moscow flat. “You have to remember that these astronauts and cosmonauts are really good friends at this point,” Cross contended. “They’ve been living in close quarters all this time in space. Their lives depend on each other, and before they even went up there, they were training together for months, if not years. They learn each other’s languages. They eat each other’s food. This is why the ISS is always a beacon of hope, even when there’s conflict on earth, because these space people are actually quite close. They’re really good friends when they’re up there.” (The space station has about 13,700 cubic feet of livable space—roughly the area of four semitruck trailers. The spacecraft weighs nearly a million pounds.)