RosCosmos Clarifies Statements on SpaceX

Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) officials never stated that the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) will not be allowed to dock its Dragon space capsule to the International Space Station, representatives from NASA said recently.

While this is how the Western media interpreted the announcements released by RosCosmos, the whole situation was a clear-cut case of “lost in translation,” according to officials from several space agencies.

In order to understand why the way RosCosmos' statements were translated doesn't even make sense, it's important to keep in mind that the ISS is a collaboration between the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada.

An international committee featuring representatives from all these countries is in charge of running the ISS according to needs and demands it stipulates, Universe Today reports. And therein lies the source of the recent misunderstandings, NASA officials explain.

“This was never a SpaceX issue. This was an International Space Program issue – which has final approving authority for any spacecraft set to dock with the International Space Station – be it the HTV, ATV or even Soyuz, they all have to go through the exact same process,” Rob Navias explained.

During a recent interview, the NASA spokesman explained that all RosCosmos stated was that it requires SpaceX to undergo the same rigorous certification procedure as European ATV, Japanese HTV and even Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules need to undergo.

SpaceX must complete both the Stage Readiness Review and the Flight Readiness Review before it is allowed to bring Dragon anywhere near the $100 billion ISS. “This is basically an issue of semantics, of interpretation,” the NASA spokesman explained.

“The Russian media wrote this article and when it was translated – it appeared as if that Russia was saying something – which they simply weren’t,” Navias added. The debate was ignited because SpaceX wants to combine two test flights it must complete under a NASA contract into a single one.

This will see a Falcon 9 medium-lift delivery system launching a new Dragon capsule on December 19. The spacecraft would then complete a few orbits around the planet, before attempting to dock with the ISS. The latter maneuver was originally scheduled to be part of a dedicated test flight.

RosCosmos released its statement after NASA announced that it was considering whether to grant SpaceX permission to merge the two flights. The Russians simply announced that they want to see the American company complete the necessary validation tests before allowing its space capsule near the ISS.