ISS

The only Russian access gate to the ISS remains out of service. And that is forcing NASA to take action

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“We are taking a very serious risk; we have no technical reserves for platform number 31; There is only one position for Soyuz-2 launches (in Baikonur),” warned Dmitri Rogozin, then director general of Roscosmos, on January 25, 2022. That wake-up call went almost unnoticed, but today it takes on unexpected weight. What was then described as a structural vulnerability has become an immediate problem for Russia’s ability to reach low orbit. And, in turn, for the operational balance of the International Space Station. That reflection of 2022 seemed distant until the last takeoff from Baikonur showed that the lack of redundancy is no longer a hypothetical risk. Platform 31/6, from where manned missions and freighters take off to the ISS, was damaged after the launch of Soyuz MS-28 (Expedition 74). The ship docked without problems, but the ramp did not pass the test. From that moment on, the question stopped being technical and became operational: what does it mean for the only infrastructure configured for these missions to be out of service from one day to the next. What happened in Baikonur and how is Russian access to the ISS? The first images of the Baikonur complex after the launch showed that the incident had not been minor. The service platform located under the rocket, a mobile structure of about 20 tons used for access prior to takeoff, a fall appeared in the ramp pit. According to sources consulted by Ars Technica, everything indicates that it was not secured correctly and was ejected by the thrust of Soyuz-2. Roscosmos admitted damage to “several elements” of the complex, although without going into details. The visible magnitude of the impact suggests a more complex repair than the official message indicates. Condition of damaged platform in Baikonur, Kazakhstan Now, one of the least visible elements of the Russian program is the diversity of platforms from which the different Soyuz take off. However, only a subset of them meets the technical and orbital conditions to send crew or cargo to the ISS. That detail explains why the damage in Baikonur generates such an immediate impact on international planning. Current overview of the main ramps: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Site 31/6 (Soyuz-2): ramp used for manned missions and Progress freighters. Currently not operational. Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Site 45 (Baiterek/Soyuz-5): future candidate, still in the testing phase and without certification for missions to the ISS. Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Gagarin’s Start: symbolic installation of the Soviet program, today deactivated and in the process of becoming a museum. Plesetsk, Russia: designed for high and polar orbits, it is not suitable for reaching the inclination of the ISS. Vostochny, Russia: in use for cargo missions, but not configured for crewed flights or missions to the ISS. The temporary paralysis of the Russian capacity to launch missions to the station affects a decisive element of the orbital ecosystem: the Progress freighters. These ships not only transport supplies for the Russian segment, but also provide the fuel necessary to periodically raise the orbit of the ISS and use their thrusters to assist in attitude control. Other ships, such as Dragon or Cygnus, have demonstrated ability to contribute in part to these tasksalthough they do not cover all uses of Progress. NASA’s response was not long in coming. According to internal planning cited by Ars Technica, lThe agency has advanced two Dragon cargo missions to ensure sufficient operating margin in the coming months. CRS-34, initially scheduled for June 2026, moves to May, and CRS-35 moves from November to August. One source describes these changes as a “direct result” of the Baikonur incident. The goal is simple: ensure that the station has supplies without depending on the uncertain schedule of upcoming Progress missions. Launch of Soyuz MS-28 from Baikonur on November 27, 2025 From the outside, the agency has insisted that the station maintains sufficient capacity for the maneuvers of reboot and attitude control and that no immediate impacts are expected. Everything seems to indicate that the rescheduling of the Dragon missions works as an additional cushion. Roscosmos claims to have of the necessary spare parts and maintains that the repairs will be completed “in the near future.” However, the official estimate contrasts with the valuations collected by the Russian newspaper Kommersant. In that publication, Aleksandr Khokhlov, a member of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Cosmonautics Federation, maintains that the repairs could be prolonged from half a year to more than a yeardepending on the actual extent of the damage. Added to this are the extreme temperatures in Kazakhstan in winter and the budgetary pressure derived from the war in Ukraine. What happened at Baikonur reminds us that the architecture of the station depends on both technical decisions and political priorities. NASA has already reinforced its operating margin and now the question is how Russia will respond to a setback that reveals the lack of redundancies in its infrastructure. The pace of repair and the willingness to sustain their participation will mark the stability of the program in the coming months. Ultimately, this episode anticipates the challenges of a stage in which the ISS requires more effort than is sometimes visible. Images | NASA (1, 2, 3) | Roscosmos In Xataka | We already know when the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will be closest to Earth and what’s better: how to see it

China has built a space empire in 30 years after being expelled from ISS. Your revenge is about to complete

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If the space race of the last century was decided on the moon, that of this century could be a few years after its final act. The space is again the great theater where the two greatest economies in the world demonstrate their technological muscle, and China He has been preparing a master function to close your arc of redemption. A little paint in the face. This story has a clear origin: 1994. That year, China requested to join the International Space Station program with the other partners, But the United States vetoed its entrancearguing that the Asian country was not trustworthy. China developed its own manned space program, but in 2011, the United States Wolf amendment was a second blow, prohibiting NASA from any type of cooperation with Chinese counterparts. In parallel, China suffered the consequences of a world increasingly dependent on navigation satellites. In 1993 he had a first affront when the United States deliberately turned off GPS satellites on the Chinese ship Yinhe, leaving it drifting for 33 days. In 1996, a new blackout made the GPS guidance of a Chinese missile fail. In 2003, China invested 230 million euros to join the Galilean satellite navigation system of the European Union, but also ended up being expelled from this project. Of isolated to self -sufficient. Instead, China started a long -term plan to build, piece by piece, everything they had denied. In 1999 he launched the Shenzhou ship 1. In 2003, it became the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to independently send a man to space: Yang Liwei aboard the Shenzhou 5. In 2007, China undertaked at the same time its lunar career and its own navigation network. The Chang’e 1 probe began to orbit the moon, and the Beidou-1 satellite meant the first stone of an alternative system to the American GPS. Similarly, in 2011 he launched Tiangong-1, the embryo of what would be his future space station. In 2022 he was no longer interested in ISS: China put the Tiangong Space Stationthat since then It is permanently inhabited. Even in areas such as planetary defense, China is replicating and improving Western missions. After the success of NASA’s dart mission, will launch its own mission to divert an asteroidwith a key improvement: a second ship that will observe the impact in real time and measure the live result. The first milestones. China’s space exploits have been growing in complexity. In 2020, the Chang’e 5 probe brought samples of the visible face of the moon for the first time in 44 years, and of a geologically younger area than the samples of the Apollo missions, so that They also interested NASAdespite the law that prevents them from collaborating. It was not until 2024, with the Chang’e-6 mission, which China achieved an impressive unpublished feat: bring to Earth The first samples of the hidden face of the moona tremendous effect in the new space race that now seeks to repeat on Mars, going for the first soil samples of the red planet. While NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is in a limbo, China plans to launch its Tianwen-3 probe in 2028 and bring samples of Mars in 2031, foreseeably advanceing NASA. He could do it alone, but in a brilliant geopolitical movement, he has invited agencies around the world to join with their own instruments, which leaves the United States in an awkward position. Sorpasso in sight. Beyond the robotic missions, the most important milestones at stake are the missions manned to the moon. While the NASA Artemis program accumulates numerous delays and cost overruns, China advances firmly towards its objectives of stepping on the moon and establishing a lunar base. NASA has already arrived six times to the surface of the moon between 1969 and 1972, but the new lunar race does not go to put a flag, but to control resources. The one who arrives first and establishes a base in the South Lunar Pole It will have a key advantage to select areas with ice water and establish the communication protocols of the cislunar space. Nervousness in Washington. The United States reaction to China’s spatial advances show that the Sorpasso It is possible. The Wolf amendment has fallen short, and now NASA has hardened its position, prohibiting Chinese citizens Access to all its facilities, programs and even zoom meetings. The agency alleges reasons for “cybersecurity.” At the same time, NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, has adopted A belligerent rhetoric against China: “We are in a second space race. We will win the Chinese on the moon.” You can intuit the fear of a defeat, and one of the strategic movements of the United States to avoid it will be to install a nuclear reactor on the moon before China does, to be able to declare an “exclusion zone”, de facto controlling the most valuable areas. In 30 years, China has gone from being a spatial outcome to an undisputed leader who marks the rhythm in the exploration of the 21st century. The veto that had to stop her became the fuel of her ambition. His space empire is no longer a promise; It is a reality that orbits our heads and perches on other worlds. Revenge, patient and meticulous, is already served. Image | Xinhua In Xataka | While NASA faces the cancellation of 41 missions, China is making authentic virguerías in space

The state of the ISS is so alarming that the United States and Russia have sat at the table for the first time in eight years

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You have to look back until October 2018 to find the last time that NASA’s top people and her Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, the faces were seen. The launch of the Crew 11 mission has served as an excuse for them to meet again. A meeting to save the furniture. The new general director of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, traveled for the first time to the United States last week to witness the launch of the SPACEX CREW-11 MISSIONin which two American astronauts, one Japanese and a Russian one flew to the International Space Station. Bakanov took advantage of the trip to meet with NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy. On the table, the future of a space station that ages by leaps and bounds and The road map for withdrawal in 2030. NASA and ROSCOSMOS are needed. In a global context where war and other geopolitical tensions have affected almost all areas of cooperation, the International Space Station and the exchange of seats in Crew Dragon and Soyuz ships remains one of the few bridges standing. But this has been the first high -level meeting in almost eight years, especially since the previous Chief of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, adopted a belligerent rhetoric against his US partners. According to the Russian state agency TassBakanov and Duffy agreed to extend the shared use of the International Space Station until 2028, as well as a joint process for exorbitation in 2030. “The conversation was quite well,” Bakanov said. The US agency Associated Press He says that both leaders pointed out the need to maintain cooperation in space despite their “strong discrepancies” on Earth. They also agreed to seek the approval of their respective presidents for future joint projects, including lunar and exploration of deep space. The ISS falls apart. This “we have to talk” is not accidental. It occurs at a time when the state of the International Space Station is a matter of “deep concern”, as noted by the NASA Aerospace Security Advisory Panel in April. The Committee described the coming years as “The riskiest period“Of the ISS in all its existence. One of the most serious and persistent problems are Air leaks in the Russian module Zvezdafirst detected in 2019. Despite the multiple attempts to repair them, the module continues to lose air, a qualified problem with the highest level of risk of NASA. To this we must also add other ailments of a structure with almost 30 years components. Lack of spare parts for critical systems, space costumes with technology from the 70s that have caused several incidents, and constant problems with bathroomsamong other headaches. Pension plan. The common denominator of these risks is a huge budget deficit. No government wants to allocate more money to the International Space Station when the priority is to finance future lunar missions and commercial stations. More than a shy thaw, the meeting between Bakanov and Duffy represents the imperative need to jointly manage the last years of the ISS, the largest symbol of international cooperation outside the earth. One of the Keys to this approach It is the contract of almost one billion dollars that NASA awarded Spacex to develop a ship that tow the station towards a safe reentry on the Pacific Ocean. Before Spacex, the ISS partners had considered using Russian progress ships for this task, an option that Roscosos seems to have put back on the table. Be that as it may, the retirement of the ISS already has its date insured by the end of this decade. Image | ROSCOSMOS In Xataka | NASA’s Security Committee has launched a forceful warning on ISS: it is in very poor condition

An unpleasant fault in the ISS bath forces astronauts to extreme precautions

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Living in space is full of challenges. One of the most earthly is the frequency with which the toilets of the International Space Station are spoiled. A ghost threat. Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi told on social networks that his weekend had been crowded by “a strange damage in the bathroom just before Saturday lunch.” In a somewhat cryptic way, Onishi reported That, after the incident, he had been “living with fear of the ghost threat, an invisible threat” that his followers soon interpreted as an unpleasant olfactory experience. Extreme precautions. Finally, Saturday’s breakdown in one of the toilets of the International Space Station has persisted this week, forcing astronauts to take drastic measures, such as giving up coffee. “The bathroom worked badly before yesterday,” explains Onishi in his X profile. “I had to spend yesterday without even taking a cup of coffee,” he laments. For a “coffee lover”, like He describes himselfthe measure reflects the seriousness with which the crew of expedition 73 are living the breakdown. The nth fault of the WC. On Wednesday, NASA astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann “did an emergency maintenance in the afternoon, so I could enjoy a quiet morning again,” Onishi account. But the ghost threat persists. The bathrooms of the American segment of the Space Station have been for weeks, if not months, giving war. Without going any further, on July 15, Onishi himself He spent two hours replacing the “toilet pump separator”, a key piece that centrifuges urine and air. A Russian eschatological roulette. In May, the problems were even more evident. After change a defective pump Together with his NASA partner Jonny Kim, Takuya Onishi compared the use of the bathroom with “playing Russian roulette.” On another occasion, the breakdowns light was turned on at dawn. “Not to wake up others, I secretly contacted Houston and took care of the situation,” The Japanese astronaut commented. With humor, he added that the six times that the fault light had lit, he had been present in five. From the mission control they replied: “You are the chosen one.” A complicated engineering. The International Space Station has four toilets: two in the Russian segment (in the Zvezdá and Nauka modules) and two in the US segment (the WHC and The modern UWMSboth in the Tranquility module). These systems are engineering wonders that use air suction instead of water. While Urine is recycled through a processor complex To turn it into drinking water, solid waste is collected in bags inside hermetic containers. The containers are stored and, finally, are discarded in load ships designed to burn in the atmospheresuch as American Cygnus or Russian progress. Why do they fail so much. He New UWMS toilet He has given many problems since his installation, but he is not the only one who fails. In recent years there has been From water leaks In the urine pretreatment system until Simultaneous breakdowns in all toilets. Each failure requires that astronauts, who are also the plumbers of the station, dedicate time and effort to complex repairs in small spaces. Onishi’s story, a veteran astronaut in his second long -term stay, is a reminder that life in orbit mixes scientific experiments in microgravity with much more mundane challenges. For now, thanks to an emergency repair, normality and coffee have returned to the International Space Station. Images | NASA, JAXA In Xataka | In the 90s they experienced with living outside the earth and, indeed, we would all be dead except cockroaches

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