Dmitry Rogozin, the embattled director of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency who blamed NASA and its Western space allies for sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is stepping down on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s TASS news agency reported Friday.
Rogozin, who once mockingly joked that NASA would need trampolines to get its astronauts into space without Russian help and who later said the United States would need “broomsticks” to reach orbit without Russian rocket engines, will be replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov.
The Kremlin announced Rogozin’s dismissal on its website, saying simply that Putin “signed a decree on Dmitry Rogozin.” It did not say what led to the decision, whether Rogozin was reassigned to another government position, or even whether the dismissal was punitive.
Dmitry Rogozin, the outgoing head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, during a 2021 discussion with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow. Kremlin
The shake-up came as NASA and Roscosmos finalized a long-awaited agreement to resume “integrated” launch operations, meaning placing astronauts on SpaceX Dragon crews and NASA astronauts on Russian Soyuz crews for flights to the International Space Station.
The “swap” arrangement would ensure that at least one cosmonaut or astronaut is always aboard the space station to operate or repair their agency’s systems, even if an emergency forces Soyuz or Crew Dragon to leave early , taking all of that vehicle’s crew home with it.
The agreement takes effect with the crew’s next two rotational flights in September. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will join Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin aboard the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle, scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 21.
Astronaut Anna Kikina will also launch in September aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule alongside NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Kasada and veteran Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. The launch was scheduled for September 1, but NASA officials are no longer saying when the mission might begin, indicating there could be a delay.
NASA also announced Friday that astronaut Loral O’Hara will fly aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft next spring, along with Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will join astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg aboard a SpaceX capsule that is also targeting a spring 2023 launch.
Anna Kikina, the only woman in Russia’s cosmonaut corps, will be the first to ride into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon space station shuttle in September under a newly implemented agreement to resume flying NASA astronauts on Soyuz spacecraft and astronauts on American vehicles. Roscosmos
“The station is designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from each space agency to function,” NASA said in a statement. “No one agency has the ability to function independently of the others.”
The agreement comes amid escalating Cold War-level tensions between Russia, the United States and Europe over the ongoing incursion into Ukraine. Rogozin has been particularly vocal on social media in response to Western sanctions and other perceived threats.
His departure comes days after the European Space Agency pulled out of the joint ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars mission, a high-profile project to land a sophisticated rover on the red planet to search for signs of past life. Roscosmos earlier suspended commercial Soyuz launch operations at ESA’s Kourou Flight Facility, French Guiana.
ESA said it was ending its involvement in ExoMars because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Rogozin responded by saying that Roscosmos would not allow the use of a new ESA robotic arm launched last year as part of Russia’s Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and Russian station commander Oleg Artemiev are due to perform a spacewalk next Thursday to equip the arm and prepare it for operational use. Despite Rogozin’s comments, preparations are ongoing and it is unclear how serious he was.
Rogozin’s post-invasion tweets initially sparked widespread concern about the future of the ISS, but as they continued, the posts were taken less seriously and have now become fodder for jokes in the West.
SpaceX, which has already launched 164 Falcon 9 rockets — 30 so far this year alone — recently used Rogozin’s broomstick comment to make a patriotic endorsement of American rocket technology to the delight of listeners tuning into the company’s launch webcast.
“It’s time to let America’s broom fly and hear the sound of freedom!” SpaceX Launch Director Julia Black said the Falcon 9 countdown was nearing zero. “LD is ready to launch.”
But Rogozin’s criticism of American policy and threats to end cooperation with the space stations were not taken lightly. He even joked about nuclear weapons.
When sanctions were imposed on three Russian companies that supply fuel and technology for Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, Rogozin tweeted “now their products will not be able to receive visas to visit the United States. Strange, because by definition they enjoy a visa-free regime and are always ready to visit the aggressor country”.
Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian jet fighter pilot and veteran astronaut, plans to join cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev for a spacewalk outside the International Space Station next week to work on a new European Space Agency robotic arm attached to a Russian laboratory module. NASA
He suggested that President Joe Biden was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and said that the Russian engines were all that allowed the space station to avoid the menacing “space junk that your talented businessmen have polluted Earth’s orbit with.”
He was probably referring to SpaceX founder Elon Musk and his company’s ongoing efforts to launch thousands of Starlink internet satellites.
“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from uncontrolled deorbiting and falling into the United States or Europe?” There is also an option to launch a 500-ton structure in India and China,” Rogozin said in comments translated by Google. “Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? … All risks are yours. Are you ready for them?”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other agency executives never responded to Rogozin’s remarks, avoiding any direct criticism of Roscosmos. Instead, they said only that NASA continues to work with the Russian space agency to safely operate the space station, which cannot be operated independently by any country.
Russia provides the fuel and thrusters, either on the station or on visiting Progress cargo ships, to alter the station’s orbit and offset the effects of atmospheric drag. NASA provides most of the laboratory’s electrical power, the massive gyroscopes that help maintain the station’s orientation, and a computer and communications network for the entire station.
Russian cosmonauts are not trained to operate American systems and vice versa, meaning at least one astronaut and one cosmonaut must be on board at all times. If one side withdraws, the other will likely have to withdraw as well or quickly devise alternative systems.
NASA wants to operate the space station by 2030, but Russian cooperation is needed. And it is not yet known whether Russia will accept it.
More William Harwood
Bill Harwood has covered the US space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. It covers 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune, and dozens of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a dedicated amateur astronomer and co-author of Communication Check: The Last Flight of Space Shuttle Columbia.
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