Despite Diplomatic Tensions, U.S.-Russian Space Ties Persist

hide captionRussian personnel are the first to meet space station crew members when they return to earth.

Russian personnel are the first to meet space station crew members when they return to earth.

Tonight, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryazanskiy, Oleg Kotov and NASA Astronaut Mike Hopkins will return to earth from the International Space Station.

Parachutes will open, and the duo's Russian-built Soyuz capsule will touch down on the remote, frozen plains of the central Asian republic of Khazakstan.

But this March is a particularly chilly time for Hopkins to be landing: Russia's military intervention in Crimea is straining relations between the two superpowers. And, while NASA has a team in place to welcome Hopkins home, it's Russian helicopters that will be picking him up.

"We ride with the Russians," says Josh Byerly, a spokesperson at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.

Despite the current standoff between Russia and the West over the Ukraine, Byerly is confident Hopkins will be able to hitch a ride back to civilization.

"The Russians take very good care of our crew whenever they're out there," Byerly says.

Byerly says that operations aboard the International Space Station have run smoothly throughout the crisis: "Their systems depended on ours and ours depend on theirs," he says.

NASA's dependence on the Russians runs deep. Since the U.S. retired the space shuttle in 2011, Russian rockets are the only way up. That state of affairs is likely to continue for at least a few years to come, until NASA and its partners can fly a replacement.

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Despite Diplomatic Tensions, U.S.-Russian Space Ties Persist