Americans' last flight from Baikonur

Those that thought the historic SpaceX Crew Demo-2 mission has changed the game should think again, Forbes writes in the article Despite SpaceX Success NASA Will Pay Russia $90 Million To Take U.S. Astronaut To The ISS. In the days after “Launch America”—when two NASA astronauts went to the International Space Station (ISS) from U.S. soil for the first time in almost a decade, ending NASA’s reliance on the Russian space agency Roscosmos—there’s been a lot of talk about it being a wake-up call for Russia’s space program and some gloating by SpaceX.

It’s not that simple—and it’s definitely not the end of co-operation between the U.S. and Russia. Yesterday NASA announced that it would be sending its astronaut Kate Rubins on a six-month mission to the ISS as a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 63/64 crew.

Surely she’s going on the next SpaceX launch from Florida on SpaceX’s $55 million-per-seat Crew Dragon? No—Rubins’ trip will be with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who will together launch on October 14, 2020 on a Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Her seat will cost NASA $90 million, just like in the pre-SpaceX Crew Dragon days.

“This contract modification is $90,252,905.69 for the single crew mission seat in the fall of 2020, including all necessary training and preparation for launch, flight operations, landing and crew rescue for a long-duration mission as well as some limited crew cargo delivery to and from the station,” NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz told Forbes in an email yesterday. “This also includes ancillary services related to launches and landings.”

However, Rubins’ trip to the ISS from Kazakhstan will probably bring the curtain down on NASA astronauts heading to the ISS from Kazakhstan. “NASA has high confidence that U.S. commercial crew providers will be available in 2020/2021 and that no further Soyuz seat purchases will be necessary,” said Schierholz.

Still, couldn’t Rubins join NASA colleagues Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, on Crew-1—the first scheduled SpaceX Crew Dragon trip to the ISS—expected to launch on August 30, 2020? After all, Crew Dragon does have seven seats.

“For commercial crew missions, NASA has contracted for four seats per mission,” explained Schierholz. “NASA is using the additional space on commercial crew missions to bring more than 220 pounds of cargo back and forth to the station with each mission.”

If Rubins’ trip to space on a Soyuz is the last one for NASA, it may begin the opposite trend of Roscosmos—left without the receipts from NASA to cost-effectively fly its Soyuz—paying SpaceX and Boeing for seats.

“NASA is in discussions with Roscosmos to ensure future Soyuz and operational commercial crew missions include both a US crew member and a cosmonaut to continue safely operating the space station,” said Schierholz. “The expectation is cosmonauts will fly on Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner and vice versa. The exact details of how that is enabled are what we’re working.”

Boeing will fly a second uncrewed flight test of its CST-100 Starliner vehicle later in 2020.