Video Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS), Friday 18 March, dressed in yellow and blue outfits, to pursue a Russian-American mission started more than twenty years ago, despite the tensions raised by The invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Travel between Americans and Russians. It is a difficult scene to imagine since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Yet it went well on the arrival of three Russian cosmonauts in the International Space Station (ISS), Friday, March 18th.
They pose proudly alongside their new crew. Newcomers are easily distinguished on clichés: they wear a yellow and blue combination. A palette of colors that strangely reminds the flag of Ukraine. But according to the Russian space agency, this choice is explained by a surplus of yellow fabric in the company that is responsible for making the outfits.
The commander of Soyuz, Oleg Artemye, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov took off from Baikonour to Kazakhstan as part of a scientific mission that should last six and a half months. They joined the current crew composed in particular of three astronauts of NASA – Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron – and German Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency.
Yet the American-Russian collaboration in space has been put to the test since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, three weeks ago. In the context of US economic sanctions against the Russian government, the US President, Joe Biden, had ordered high-tech export restrictions against Moscow who, according to him, were designed to “degrade” the Russian aerospace industry. including its spatial program.
Dmitri Rogozine, Director General of the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, then unleashed in a series of publications on Twitter suggesting that US sanctions could “destroy” the team’s team work and lead to the Fall of the ISS on Earth.
The space station was born in part from a foreign policy initiative aimed at improving the American-Russian relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and to erase the hostility of the cold war that had stimulated the spatial race American-Soviet.