No mention of the return trip

Via The Telegraph

Two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut lifted off for a six-month stay with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, unaffected by political tensions following Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

The Russian Soyuz rocket carrying Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson was due to dock with the ISS early Wednesday, only six hours after it was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A technical glitch on its approach in orbit caused a two-day delay in their docking.

The trio were using a fast-track approach to the ISS completed by only four previous crewed missions. They will now orbit the Earth 34 times instead of the four orbits originally envisaged.

US-Russia space cooperation has been unaffected by the political and economic fallout triggered by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, who is due to fly to the ISS in May, said that “politics starts to fall by the wayside” when working with Russian space engineers, flight controllers and cosmonauts on a daily basis.

“We’re three really good friends climbing into a Soyuz (capsule) to fly into space. All politics aside, there’s no doubt it’s going to work for us,” he added.

NASA relies on Russia to deliver astronauts to the station through the Soyuz capsule and to provide the rocket power essential for major station manoeuvres.

The Russian segment of the space station depends on NASA solar power and communication satellites, as well as US gyroscopes and flight controllers at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

The ISS requires tight cooperation between US and Russian flight control centres to keep it adequately supplied and staffed.

John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University described the relationship as a “mutual dependency”.

“It’s certainly not in our interest to so alienate Russia that we no longer had access to the station,” he added. “So, I think the by far most likely outcome is kind of encapsulating the station from the broader political currents”.