Tensions in eastern Ukraine and heightened Western fears of a Russian invasion should not have a significant impact on the International Space Station or US-Russia cooperation in space, the former head of the National Space Council told The Associated Press.
That was before Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine on Thursday last week, however.
Four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut are currently on the space station.
Photo: AP 照片：美聯社
Scott Pace, who served as executive secretary of the space council under US President Donald Trump and is now the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the space station “has been largely isolated” from political events.
“It’s possible to imagine a break with Russia that would endanger the space station, but that would be at the level of a dropping diplomatic relations,” said Pace. “That would be something that would be an utterly last resort so I don’t really see that happening unless there is a wider military confrontation.” The space station, an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, including Canada, several countries in Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States, launched in 1998 and morphed into a complex that’s almost as long as a football field, with 13km of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs.
It marked two decades of people continuously living and working in orbit in 2020.
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
The first crew — American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko — blasted off from Kazakhstan on Oct. 31, 2000.
The three astronauts got along fine but tension sometimes bubbled up with the two mission controls, in Houston and outside Moscow.
Russia kept station crews coming and going after NASA’s Columbia disaster in 2003 and after the space shuttles retired in 2011.
There have been concerns raised in US Congress about the impact that conflict over Ukraine could have on the International Space Station.
Lawmakers have specifically exempted space cooperation from previous sanctions and can be expected to make similar arguments against targeting it as the administration considers its next steps over Ukraine.
(AP)
前美國國家太空委員會主席對美聯社表示，烏克蘭東部的緊張局勢，以及西方對俄羅斯入侵的擔憂加劇，不應對國際太空站或美俄兩國在太空領域的合作產生重大影響。
然此言是在上週四俄軍入侵烏克蘭前提出。
太空站上目前有四名美國太空總署太空人、兩名俄羅斯太空人，以及一名歐洲太空人。
曾任美國總統唐納‧川普政府太空委員會執行秘書、現任喬治華盛頓大學太空政策研究所所長的史考特‧培斯表示，太空站「多半與政治事件隔絕」。
「想像與俄羅斯決裂會危及太空站是可能的，但那會是在外交關係終止的層次」，培斯說。「那是萬不得已的手段，所以除非發生範圍更廣的軍事衝突，不然我真的不認為這種情況會發生」。太空站是由五個航太機構所組成的國際夥伴關係，分屬十五個國家，包括加拿大、歐洲數國、日本、俄羅斯以及美國，於一九九八年啟用，並演變成一個幾乎與足球場一樣長的綜合體，有十三公里長的電線、面積一畝的太陽能電池板，以及三個高科技實驗室。
二○二○年標誌著人類已連續在繞地球軌道上生活及工作了二十年。
二○○○年十月三十一日，第一批機組人員──美國人比爾‧薛佛與俄羅斯人謝爾蓋‧克里卡廖夫及尤里‧吉德津科──由哈薩克升空。
這三名太空人相處愉快，但緊張局勢有時會在休士頓及莫斯科近郊的兩個任務控制中心引發。
二○○三年美國太空總署的哥倫比亞號失事，以及二○一一年太空梭退役後，俄羅斯太空站仍持續有人員進出。
美國國會對烏克蘭衝突可能會對國際太空站造成的影響表示擔憂。
議員已明確將太空合作排除在先前的制裁之外，且可預期政府在討論對烏克蘭問題將採取的下一步行動時，會提出類似的理由反對制裁國際太空站。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
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