WASHINGTON — The Russian space agency Roscosmos has hailed the first face-to-face meeting between its leader and the head of NASA in almost seven years while NASA largely ignored the event.
Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov met July 31 with NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy at the Kennedy Space Center. Both were at the center to attend the launch of the Crew-11 mission that day, which was scrubbed because of weather. It was the first time the leaders of the two agencies had met in person since October 2018, when NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine met with Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Later that day, Roscosmos posted, but later deleted, a brief summary of the meeting on its Telegraph social media channel. The post included a video about a half-minute long that showed clips of the meeting as well as both Duffy and Bakanov addressing launch guests.
Roscosmos said in the summary that Bakanov and Duffy discussed cooperation on the International Space Station as well as potential cooperation on lunar and “deep space” programs, without elaboration. No such cooperation exists today, with Roscosmos deciding several years ago not to participate in the lunar Gateway as originally envisioned.
Bakanov spoke with Russian reporters after the meeting. According to the articles filed by those reporters, Duffy supported an extension of the existing “cross-flight” agreement that allows NASA astronauts to fly on Soyuz vehicles in exchange for Russian cosmonauts flying on commercial crew vehicles. NASA has long supported such exchanges to ensure there are both Americans and Russians on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be sidelined for an extended time.
Bakanov said the two countries agreed to continue operations of the ISS through 2028, which has been the plan. Russia is the only ISS partner yet to commit to ISS operations through 2030, the projected ISS retirement date.
He also stated that he was working to expand cooperation with NASA, which is currently limited to the ISS. “We are proposing to broaden this collaboration as much as possible within the framework of projects unaffected by sanctions,” he said in one report.
He added he had invited Duffy to Moscow late this year for additional discussions, coinciding with the next crewed Soyuz launch to the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in late November or early December. “By the next meeting, scheduled for November-December, we will prepare a comprehensive agenda and work through it at the technical level to reach concrete decisions,” Bakanov said, but added that it would be “overly ambitious” to consider new large-scale projects.
In contrast to Bakanov’s statements, Duffy and NASA said almost nothing about the meeting. “On Thursday, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy met with Dmitry Bakanov, head of Roscosmos, to discuss continued cooperation and collaboration in space. This was the first meeting between the two leaders,” the agency said in a statement to SpaceNews. “The discussion took place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of a planned launch for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station.”
The statement did not discuss the details of the meeting, and NASA did not respond to followup questions, including whether Duffy would meet with Bakanov again in Moscow as proposed. The agency also did not answer questions posed before the meeting, such as why Duffy agreed to meet with Bakanov and what other space agency leaders Duffy has met since being named acting NASA administrator July 9.
Bakanov told Russian media that Duffy “helped us get the opportunity to come here for the joint launch of our mission,” a trip that also included a tour of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and other facilities.
Ken Bowersox, NASA associate administrator for space operations, was asked about the meeting between Duffy and Bakanov during an Aug. 1 press conference after the successful Crew-11 launch. Bowersox was one of the NASA officials who attended the meeting as seen in the Roscosmos video.
“At a high level, let me just say it was very positive,” he said. “The two of them, I thought, had a great connection. They started the very beginning of what can be a good relationship.”
The discussions, he said, involved cooperation on “capabilities and standards” for crew rescue of each others’ vehicles. “They talked about the things we might be able to in the future together if the situation allows us to continue that type of effort.”
Duffy has had little interaction with the media since being named the head of NASA. While he attended the July 31 launch attempt at KSC, he did not meet with reporters there, instead doing video interviews with the Fox News Channel and briefly meeting with social media content creators invited by NASA to cover the launch.
Had the Crew-11 launch taken place as scheduled July 31, Bakanov was set to participate in the post-launch press conference. Duffy was not.