NASA

NASA and the White House have since late last year quietly drawn up contingency plans for the International Space Station in light of tensions with Moscow ...

In recent weeks, NASA has worked on drafting a formal request to contractors for ways to deorbit the space station earlier than planned in case Russia withdraws from the alliance, two of the sources said. The first Russian cosmonaut under the agreement, Anna Kikina, is set to launch aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon from Florida in September. read more The station's intergovernmental agreement requires any partner to give a one-year notice of intent to leave. Meanwhile, SpaceX, the private spacecraft company founded by Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk, has also been studying similar reboost capabilities, two of the sources said. All future Cygnus capsules will be capable of those reboosts should NASA request it, a Northrop spokeswoman said. Underscoring the still strong relationship between the two space agencies, the sources said a small team of NASA officials met their Russian counterparts in Moscow in early July to finalize a long-sought agreement for sharing astronaut flights to the ISS, a capability NASA sees as key to having a backup ride to the station. "It's been hugely beneficial to U.S. science, to U.S. technology, U.S. advancement of our space program, and so it is in the U.S. national security interest," Rose Gottemoeller, former U.S. President Bill Clinton's national security advisor on Russian and Eurasian affairs, said of the relationship on the ISS with Russia. "Even following this horrible and violent invasion of Ukraine, we've been able to sustain it because it's beneficial for us, as it's beneficial for the Russians," added Goettemoeller, who played a key role in forging the U.S.-Russian space station alliance in 1993. We're NASA. We always have contingencies." NASA otherwise declined to address specific contingency plans it is considering, but said it is "continually looking for new capabilities on the space station and planning for a seamless transition to commercially operated destinations in low-Earth orbit." "We need to make sure, though, that we do have plans. While NASA and White House officials have acknowledged the existence of contingency plans before, they have avoided discussing them in public to avoid inflaming tensions with Russia. NASA officials instead stress the close relationship they have with Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.