Ukraine crisis unlikely to endanger International Space Station astronauts, says former US official

Four Americans, two Russians, and one European are currently whizzing around the Earth at an altitude of 254 miles while their home countries prepare for potential war

Russian and American astronauts aboard the International Space Station ISS) are likely to be safe from diplomatic tensions over Ukraine unless their home nations go to war, a former US space official has said.

Scott Pace, who was executive secretary of the White House space council under former president Donald Trump, told The Associated Press that the ISS had been “largely isolated” from political squabbles.

“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,” Mr Pace said.

“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.”

It comes after US president Joe Biden imposed a new round of economic sanctions on Russia due to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise the independence of separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

Four Americans, two Russians, and one German are currently orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles aboard the ISS, which is maintained by a partnership of 15 countries and has been continuously staffed for over 21 years.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked with the Russian segment of the International Space Station in December 2021 (Nasa via AP)

One segment of the station is run by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, while the other is run by Nasa and its counterparts from Canada, Japan and the European Union, and is dependent on the Russian segment for navigation, guidance, and manoeuvring.

The US Congress has exempted the ISS from previous sanctions against Russia, and until recently Nasa depended on Roscosmos to ferry its astronauts back and forth.

Despite escalating tensions, crew members from both countries have tended to work smoothly together, a situation described by one expert as “like a divorced couple trying to live in the same house”.

In 2015, after the US sanctioned Russia for deploying its troops to support Ukrainian separatists, Roscosmos said it would detach its modules from the ISS after 2024 and establish a new Russian-only space station, though it has since walked that back.

Mr Pace told AP: “[The ISS] is a way of undertaking common endeavours, but that power is not infinite and terrestrial conflicts on Earth can still get in the way.

“Space is ever more critical to our daily life and it’s something everybody should be aware of.”