NASA needs to re-establish the close and cooperative "core" working relationship with the Russian Federal Space Agency Roskosmos that it enjoyed in the past, former US space program official William Shepherd said in a congressional testimony on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2021) NASA needs to re-establish the close and cooperative "core" working relationship with the Russian Federal Space Agency Roskosmos that it enjoyed in the past, former US space program official William Shepherd said in a congressional testimony on Tuesday.
"We do not have that core relationship with our Russian counterparts right now that would have been very common 20 years ago," Shepherd told the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. "We've got to reignite the very strong integration we used to have with our Russian partners."
Russia brought huge and unique capabilities to making the ISS a success, Shepherd, a former US astronaut, said.
"I have seen unique spacecraft and spacecraft system designs, excellent crew equipment and space suits, well developed life support systems; excellent metalworking and fabrication; simple but effective thermal control systems, solar arrays and controls (and) good crew-to-computer integration," Shepherd said.
Russian engineers taught their US counterparts the valuable technique of mixing the complex alongside the simple in their system architectures to create exceptionally robust capabilities, he added.
