A NASA Specialist Says They Can’t Achieve Moon and Mars Missions Without Russia

Russia and the United States are actually the two rivals in the space race. But they seek to collaborate on the missions to the Moon and Mars.

Space missions are complicated and required high-tech engineering, all of which means high cost. NASA must have recognized this difficulty, and therefore the US-based space agency is eager to take its existing partnership with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos on the International Space Station, ISS, to the next level including longer distance missions.

An acting deputy chief scientist, Bob Dempsey, from NASA’s International Space Station said that spaceflights would be unfeasible without the help of Russia, a country that took over the space experience from the Soviet era.

“We have a lot of cooperation. We will have to continue to do that, you know, as we continue the space station to whenever its end of life is, and you know, going to the moon and Mars,” Dempsey told TASS. “There’s no way we can do that without cooperation with the Russians,” he underscored.

The US, Russia cooperate in space

The NASA specialist reminded the US and Russia are still working together on the ISS. To demonstrate the collaboration, he said that “sometimes one side brings hardware to the ISS for the other side to use.” Dempsey added, “We collaborate like that all the time.”

The two countries are also planning to collaborate for a Venus mission, of which the launch date is scheduled for November 2029.

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