U.S.-Russia tensions won’t reach outer space

With the U.S. and Russia locked in a bitter standoff over geopolitics here on Earth, will American astronauts orbiting 200 miles above the planet still be able to hitch a ride back home on Russian rockets?NASA says there’s no problem. And that’s good since there’s no other way home.

Ever since NASA retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011, the U.S. has depended on Russia to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station. In fact, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, along with two Russian cosmonauts, is scheduled to return to Earth after a six-month stay at the space station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

In response to Russia’s recent incursions into Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Defense Tuesday suspended its military-to-military cooperation with Russia.

But NASA isn’t part of the defense department and, according to NASA officials, the crew members will return as scheduled on Monday, despite the tensions between the two nations.  In addition, NASA added, plans are still on for a March 25 Soyuz mission that will bring a fresh crew—including one American astronaut—to the space station.

“Everything is nominal right now with our relationship with the Russians,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement Tuesday, noting that the U.S. has collaborated with Russia on the International Space Station uninterrupted for 13 years.

“Joint space exploration, historically, has risen above some of the political tensions of the moment,” NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs wrote in an email Wednesday. “Leaders across the world have seen the value in the peaceful exploration of space and have not used it to establish a political position.”

Soon after the shuttle program ended, NASA signed contracts with commercial space-flight enterprises such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Orbital Sciences Corp. to deliver cargo to the space station. But for now those providers’ spacecraft such as the SpaceX Dragon capsule can deliver supplies but lack the capability to transport astronauts.

That will change in the future: NASA currently expects its U.S.-based private contractors to be able to transport astronauts by 2017, ending U.S. reliance on Russia, Jacobs said.