I don’t think the geopolitical issues directly affect ISS operational stuff whatsoever. The missions of the Roscosmos and NASA (and ESA and JAXA and CSA) teams have nothing to do with nationalism or geopolitics and I assume everyone managing them and participating in them is smart enough to realize that.
They didn’t fuck with NASA when Dubya invaded a country, after all. Every spacefaring superpower has its fingers in a bunch of mass murder pies somewhere.
There is no geopolitical upside to Russia or geopolitical downside to the US for NASA to contract Roscosmos to rescue some Americans from space. I imagine SpaceX was just faster and cheaper and already had a mission scheduled.
NASA still gives Roscosmos money, in exchange for Roscosmos doing ISS-related stuff for NASA. NASA has a contract with Roscosmos for "joint spaceflight activities" which does not expire until the end of this year. I don't know if it can be extended past this year or not, but since the contract dates to 1993, I suspect they will continue to extend it year-by-year until the ISS program is terminated.
So far this year NASA has executed 7 contract modifications (from February through September), under which it has paid Roscosmos an additional US$2.6 million. While that's not a huge amount of money, it doesn't look like there is a hard prohibition on NASA paying Roscosmos for services.
Why are you still making up bullshit? NASA isn't cooperating with Russia because their hands are tied by prewar contracts. They're cooperating with Russia because it's a mutually beneficial arrangement which was extended in 2023 after Russia's war began.
> Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russian and U.S. space authorities have agreed an additional flight for an American astronaut on board Russia's Soyuz MS spacecraft, Interfax news agency said on Friday, in a rare sign of bilateral cooperation at a time of high tension over Ukraine.
You have the same internet I do, you should be able to find this information yourself. Stop being a dumbass, unsubscribe from your reddit or wherever it is that's influencing you to think you can know things by bullshitting instead of researching.
Another American ISS astronaut, Tracy Dyson, came back in this manner last Monday.