Enlarge / An artist's concept of the Lunar Gateway that includes elements from international partners. (credit: NASA/Alberto Bertolin)
Relations between NASA and Russia's state-owned space corporation were fairly robust five years ago when the two parties signed a joint statement that discussed partnering on the development of a space station orbiting the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway. At the time, Russia's Roscosmos was expected to provide an airlock for the facility.
Much has happened in the five years since then, of course. In 2020, as NASA began to more concretely formulate its plans for lunar exploration under the Artemis program, Russia started to pull away.
"In our view, the Lunar Gateway in its current form is too US-centric, so to speak," said then-Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin. "Russia is likely to refrain from participating in it on a large scale." At the time, Rogozin also expressed disdain for the "Artemis Accords" created by NASA, which established a set of principles to guide cooperation among nations participating in the agency’s 21st-century lunar exploration plans.
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