Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke by telephone yesterday. Few details of their discussion were made public, but one would imagine the future of the International Space Station came up. NASA described the meeting as “productive,” and Roscosmos also said it had a “friendly tone,” Marcia Smith reports. But Rogozin also reminded the NASA Administrator of the U.S. policies that stand in the way of cooperation, such as unilateral sanctions against the high-tech aerospace industry. Rogozin is under sanction himself for the role he allegedly played in Crimea. Also of concern to Russia was “the absence [for] Roscosmos of official information from American partners about plans for the management and further use of the ISS.”
The two agency heads agreed to resume talks during the Global Space Exploration Conference, on June 14. The Russians, meanwhile, are setting up meetings with various countries to gain their participation in the Russia-China International Scientific Lunar Station.