National Aeronautics and Space Administration Agency (NASA) made a statement officially reporting on cease of cooperation with Russia on a number of joint projects except for the ISS.

Taking into consideration the fact that Russia is still violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity NASA stops most joint projects, – official notice on NASA’s webpage in Facebook states. At the same time the management points out that these measures won’t affect Russian-American work onboard the ISS.

“NASA and Roscosmos will go on working together to ensure safe operation of the ISS”.
Earlier USA mass media reported that the order on cooperation banning was included in memorandum for NASA specialists. This cooperation banning concerns trips to Russia, teleconferences, invitations for Russian officials to visit NASA’s objects, e-mail correspondence with Russian officials. NASA specialists in their turn claimed that they are dissatisfied with the fact of cooperation banning assuring that scientific cooperation should lay beyond politics.

Late march new ISS mission crew consisting of Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and their NASA colleague astronaut Steven Swanson was launched to the station. Flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin (Roscosmos), ISS commander Koichi Wakata (JAXA) and flight engineer Rich Mastracchio ( NASA) were waiting for them onboard. New crew will perform a great number of scientific experiments there, where about 49 experiments planned in accordance with the Russian program and 170 – in accordance with the American one.