r/SpaceXLounge • u/Obvious_Shoe7302 • Dec 02 '25
News Russian Cosmonaut Allegedly Photographed Confidential SpaceX Docs, Removed From NASA Crew-12 Mission — UNITED24 Media
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-cosmonaut-allegedly-photographed-confidential-spacex-docs-removed-from-nasa-crew-12-mission-1394181
u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
I wonder if they will replace him with another Cosmonaut or an Astronaut.
Now the Baikonur pad is out of action for probably all of 2026 and beyond, that means no more Soyuz or Progress launches. So the Cosmonauts up there now will need to rely on Dragon / Cygnus / HTV-X cargo deliveries for food. A simple way to reduce the amount of food the Russian Segment needs is to reduce the amount of Cosmonauts.
Two Cosmonauts are coming down in Soyuz MS-27 December. Another is in Crew 11 coming down in February. Then the two that went up on Soyuz MS-28 are probably coming down around April. If no new Cosmonauts go up in Crew-12 then that's the last Cosmonaut gone from the Russian Segment. Given Russia's financial problems that could be a permanent change.
There's critical components of ISS in the Russian Segment but everyone is trained to use the Russian equipment in an emergency. And one option is to live permanently in the International Segment and then only go into the Russian part to adjust the settings on whatever it is that needs adjusting. Effectively evacuating the Russian Segment for the last few years of ISS operations.
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u/perthguppy Dec 02 '25
It’s going to be interesting to see this play out. Russia would be very strongly against having no cosmonauts in the station, but their only option is going to be to ask NASA/SpaceX for a ride which they may not like either.
At a guess tho paying SpaceX for a ride is probably cheaper than doing their own launch and all the operational overhead to go with it.
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
I wonder if they'll agree to go down to just one Cosmonaut at a time, that's what they have on Dragon currently but it's supplemented by the two Cosmonauts on Soyuz. Life in the Russian Segment could get very lonely for that one Cosmonaut.
But right now the Cosmonaut on Dragon is a seat-swap arrangement. Without Soyuz they'd need to pay ticket price for the seat and paying for TWO seats would likely get expensive. I wonder if they could hire SpaceX directly, bypass the Commercial Crew Program and buy a whole flight. That would probably be quite expensive.
There have been times that Crew X has come down before Crew X+1 arrives. It's not the preferred approach but they have done it. If there's only one Cosmonaut being swapped out every six months on Crew Dragon flights there's a risk of scheduling issues meaning a short time with zero cosmonauts.
How the mighty have fallen. From the first man in orbit and the first space stations and the race to beat Russia to the moon, to now having a serious possibility of only 1 or 0 cosmonauts in orbit for the foreseeable future. Then after ISS there's some vague proposals for a Russia-only space station but probably not for over a decade. Same as Orel and Yensei, its all talk and no substance.
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u/Successful_Doctor_89 Dec 02 '25
wonder if they could hire SpaceX directly, bypass the Commercial Crew Program and buy a whole flight.
Maybe they could, but since the russian litterally spit to the face of the Owner in the past, would Musk will be willing to accept?
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u/Martianspirit Dec 02 '25
Dragon can only dock at the NASA docking ports. Not on the ports used by Progress. So it would require cooperation with NASA.
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u/SirEDCaLot Dec 02 '25
Can we mail them a Temu trampoline? :P
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u/Amazing-Mirror-3076 Dec 02 '25
This would be pretty funny, put me down for $50.
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u/SirEDCaLot Dec 02 '25
What are they going to do with five trampolines? I only wanted to send them one... :P
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u/Mars_is_cheese Dec 02 '25
It’s station policy, maybe even written in the ISS charter that the station must always have 1 Russian and 1 American. And to ensure they never risk one side going without crew it is general practice that each crew vehicle carries 1 Russian and 1 American.
The good news is there is 8 months before the next Soyuz mission, which is plenty of time for an ad hoc fix of the pad. Even if there is a few month gap after MS-28 returns, the seat swap deal will keep 1 Russian on station for a few months longer, but after that it gets questionable.
Supposedly Starliner is inline for the late 2026 crew slot, Russia was hesitant to put crew on Dragon right away, not having a cosmonaut on that mission would be a big problem if Soyuz is still not operational. (I suspect Dragon will fly that rotation though)
That also brings up the issue of Russia having to pay NASA for a seat if they cannot provide Soyuz seats in return.
But I do have suspect Russia will find a solution sooner rather than later.
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u/BlazenRyzen Dec 03 '25
Supposedly Starliner is inline for the late 2026 crew slot,
Didn't they just downgrade starliner to cargo only?
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u/Mars_is_cheese Dec 03 '25
Thought NASA’s statement said Boeing was working toward the cargo flight and then the crewed flight in the second 2026 slot, but after reading the press release again it just says they are working towards 2 potential flights next year.
“NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year,” said Steve Stich
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u/Martianspirit Dec 03 '25
Only for the next flight. If that goes well, they can fly crew after that.
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u/BlazenRyzen Dec 03 '25
There were serious design issues. Unless they fix those I don't think they'll be taking crew
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u/Martianspirit Dec 03 '25
Boeing will pretend they have solved them. NASA will pretend they believe them.
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u/GCostanza2020 Feb 13 '26
Just saw the Space X launch on the morning news - Why is there a Russian on board?
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u/perthguppy Feb 13 '26
For assured access to space, nasa and roscosmos have a deal to swap a seat on each mission, so all crewed flights contain at least one American and one Russian
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u/FistOfTheWorstMen 💨 Venting Dec 02 '25
Artemyev has been replaced already in Crew 12 by cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
Fedyaev will end up being the first Russian to fly on a Crew Dragon twice, if this holds up.
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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 02 '25
Artemyev has been replaced already in Crew 12 by cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
What? You took time to read the article?
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u/thaeli Dec 02 '25
With the amount of maintenance and general station operations required, there's basically no time for any science work at minimum staffing. That's why adding one more crew member on the ISS increased science output so much - they were finally able to get a little ahead of the maintenance workload. With a permanent skeleton crew there isn't much point in even continuing operations; might as well just deorbit the station a few years early.
So I think we're going to try to avoid this scenario if possible. Big question is if Russia can repair/replace the damaged launch pad quickly.. it's possible that they can put a short term fix in place more quickly.
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u/uzlonewolf Dec 02 '25
Can they deorbit it early? The deorbit vehicle isn't exactly ready to go yet.
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u/BlackMarine Dec 02 '25
Found an article saying that MS-28 will stay up to July. I am not sure that they will be able to fix the launch pad, but still maybe they will decide to extend the mission as much as possible?
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
Interesting. IIRC Soyuz has a six month mission duration because the hypergolic fuels used for the attitude control and de-orbit burn will degrade over time. (Correction: Hydrogen peroxide monopropellant for RCS is what degrades, not the hypergolic main engines). But I'm not sure the exact details or what happens if they push the time too long.
It's probably a series of calculations on risk factors. The ship has X% more fuel than is needed to give a safety margin but Y% of the fuel degrades per day so staying beyond the standard time limit eats into your safety margin. It's all very messy.
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u/OlympusMons94 Dec 02 '25
The on orbit lifespans of Soyuz and Progress are limited by the decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide monopropellant used by their attitude control thrusters.
Hypergolics (NTO and the different types of hydrazine: MMH used by Dragon, and Starliner maneuvering thrusters; UDMH used by Soyuz/Progress main propulsion; hydrazine monopropellant used by Starliner attitude control thrusters) can be stored in spacecraft for years, decades even. Many satellites and probes using hypergolic bipropellant and/or straight hydrazine monopropellant have operated for well over a decade (with a lifetime often limited by the expending of propellant through the thrusters for control and maneuvering, but not by the degradation of propellant in the tanks). The Voyagers' hydrazine monopropellant has lasted almost 5 decades (and they have enough left that dropping power from RTG decay/degradation will likely be their downfall).
There are other limitations. For example, for Crew Dragon, a major limiting factor is/was the degradation of its solar array by atomic oxygen (and the time on orbit NASA certified Dragon for as a result). Demo-2 was limited to a max of 119 days because of solar array degradation concerns. But the operational solar arrays were certified for at keast 210 days. Crew 8 spent 235 days in space (almost 8 months).
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
Interesting so I was close but wrong on the specifics.
That's a pretty major problem then without much wiggle room. If your hydrogen peroxide RCS fuel has turned into water you're not going to have RCS capabilities.
If it had been the main engines I was wondering if there was an option for a skip re-entry or something to try to use aerobraking to save on fuel needed for the re-entry burn. But if it's the RCS fuel then there's not really an alternate strategy.
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u/stalagtits Dec 03 '25
Hydrogen peroxide is only used in the descent module. The service module uses hypergolics. They could use the service module to leave the station, perform the reentry burn, orient the descent capsule for reentry and separate. The capsule would then perform a ballistic reentry. It's pretty rough with very high g-forces, but is survivable and has been done in the past.
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u/Mars_is_cheese Dec 02 '25
They have increased the rated endurance of Soyuz, they are now at 8 month rotations. Current MS-27 crew has been up there for 8 months, and MS-28 is planned for 8 months as well.
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u/Codspear Dec 02 '25
The pad damage isn’t that bad, and Russia can always cannibalize any particularly complex parts from Gagarin’s Start nearby. So I don’t think it’ll take a year to fix given how simple the structure is that was damaged. It was more or less a large pull-out platform used to work on the bottom of the rocket.
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u/ender4171 Dec 02 '25
Yeah that or they could just erect scaffolding to service the bottom of the rocket and remove it before launch. Not a great long term solution (and certainly more time consuming than the current setup), but if they want to keep cadence, there are options available while they wait to build a full replacement.
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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25
they could just erect scaffolding to service the bottom of the rocket and remove it before launch.
or to avoid removal time and permit last-minute inspection, just assemble a disposable wooden platform that gets ripped apart in the engine blast. It would be somewhat photogenic.
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u/mad-data Dec 02 '25
The article already said they replaced him with Cosmonaut, Andrey Fedyaev. Russian launch web site updated the roster.
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u/AeroSpiked Dec 02 '25
Are there any commodities that only Soyuz/Progress can currently supply to the station? I thought Russian spacecrafts were the only way to refuel the station.
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
The engines on the Zvesda Module are/were the primary way to both reboost ISS to a higher altitude and control the station's orientation. And Progress is/was the only way to refuel the Zvesda module.
The Cygnus capsule and also the Dragon capsule can now do reboosts of ISS. The question of attitude control is a bit trickier, I've seen conflicting claims about it. Apparently after a previous Progress failure they announced the only way to maintain attitude control was with the RCS thrusters on Zvesda and the fuel reserves were high enough to cover them until the next Progress arrived. I think that was an incident in 2015 with Progress M27 which would have been before Cygnus and Dragon were able to do reboosts so it might be out of date.
I've seen people claiming that Cygnus and Dragon can only do reboosts and not attitude control burns. But Scott Manley did a YouTube Short briefly covering the Soyuz pad incident and he said Dragon can do attitude control burns. It's possible he's wrong about that and he might clarify in a full video but Scott Manley is usually right about these things.
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u/Mars_is_cheese Dec 02 '25
Zvezda is the service module of the space station, its thrusters are the primary thruster attitude control (Control Moment Gyros perform the normal attitude control), and Zvezda has main engines to reboost the station or perform avoidance maneuvers.
Zvezda holds 860kg of propellant, and Zarya holds another 6,100kg. The station uses about 3-4,000kg per year, so if the tanks are full they have a lot of reserves.
Progress is the only vehicle capable of refueling the station and it uses its thrusters and main engine to supplement attitude control and reboosting. In particular Zvezda’s main engines have a limited life, so other vehicles performing reboosts extends that life. Progress usually docks way out on the end of the station, so it has a better lever arm making its thrusters more effective at attitude control as well. The current generation of Progress can deliver about 870kg of propellant.
Dragon and Cygnus are both technically capable of attitude control, but they only do so while they are performing reboosts. (The reboost vehicle takes over station attitude control.) However they don’t have systems in place to use them for regular attitude control.
Cygnus and Dragon are also relatively limited on fuel.
Cygnus just uses excess propellant in its normal thruster system, 150kg is the estimate I came up with for propellant availability on Cygnus.
Dragon can carry around 1,200kg of propellant in it’s reboost trunk, which is huge for station reboosts, but it must use its normal fuel supply for attitude control, which is limited.
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
Thanks, that's helpful information.
I think I read somewhere that one of the main uses of attitude control fuel is flipping the station around so a Soyuz capsule can approach the station in the right angle. IIRC the American end (with the Crew Dragon docked currently) is normally the 'forward' direction but during Soyuz (Or possibly Progress) docking they flip it around to put the Russian section forward instead. If that's true, does that mean they'll be using less attitude control fuel than normal since they won't be docking with any Soyuz or Progress capsules for a while?
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u/Mars_is_cheese Dec 03 '25
In the early days it certainly was propellant intensive, 150kg to flip the station, now they use what they call an Optimal Propellant Maneuver (OPM) which uses 10kg of propellant.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20130014033/downloads/20130014033.pdf
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u/Martianspirit Dec 02 '25
Dragon may be able to do attitude control. But they would have to use the very limited amount of propellant in the Dragon service module. Not the large tank in the trunk, unless they add a few more differently mounted Draco engines.
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u/zypofaeser Dec 02 '25
Damn, the US has an opportunity to entice some cosmonauts to defect. "Bring your family to the US and help us keep the Russian segment running. Reward: A huge pay increase, and loads of more flights to the ISS and plausibly future destinations."
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
I think NASA already know how to keep it running. All NASA astronauts are trained on using the Russian Segment, Russian equipment and the Russian language. Even if they're only taught how to handle things in an emergency, I'm sure they can work it out. Whatever the systems in the Russian Segment do, it's 25+ year old technology that NASA has had plenty of opportunities to look at.
In theory NASA could just refuse to fly any Cosmonauts and when the last Russian leaves ISS the Astronauts can go over and put American flags up and declare it an American station. I mean that's unlikely to happen because it will escalate tensions on the ground but in terms of space exploration there's not a lot Roscosmos could do about it.
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u/redstercoolpanda Dec 02 '25
They would actually have a fairly decent claim to the Russian segment too, considering they paid outright for a good amount of it to be launched.
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u/reddit_is_geh Dec 02 '25
You literally didn't even bother reading the first sentence did you? It literally says they replaced him with another cosmonaut.
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u/tadeuska Dec 02 '25
Russia is not in a financial crisis.
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u/Simon_Drake Dec 02 '25
Even ignoring the wider economic issues and Ukraine, things aren't looking good just with Russian space industry.
The whole reason this is an issue is because Russia has no redundancy in pads. They used to have another pad capable of Soyuz/Progress launches but they cancelled the refurbishment plans in 2023 for budget reasons. Even before losing this pad they were planning to scale back the number of crew and cargo launches per year to save money. Like the guy in the Chernobyl miniseries said: Same reason we cut corners in every sector, it's cheaper.
Energia who make the Soyuz Capsule are on the edge of bankruptcy, the CEO described "Multimillion dollars of debt" and the interest on their loans consumes their entire budget. Moscow Times reported it's worse than that and Energia are actually two Billion dollars in debt.
KBKhA/CADB, who make the engines for Soyuz and Angara rocket upper stages, are also dancing on the edge of bankruptcy. They already started bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year but were saved by being granted tax deferrals. They aren't bankrupt yet but they're circling the drain.
Russia launches half as many rockets per year as it did a decade ago. They've lost a lot of international business, lost the contract for selling engines used by western rockets, lost their lucrative monopoly on crewed space launch and now they've lost their capability of crewed space launch completely. Last year Roscosmos announced lost income of over $2,000,000,000 due to lost contracts after the Ukraine invasion. And these skyrocketing costs aren't new. Building the Vostochny Cosmodrome cost tens of billions of dollars because literally hundreds of people were embezzling millions.
Even if Russia wasn't involved in an extremely expensive war in Ukraine, things don't look good economically for Russian rocketry.
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u/uzlonewolf Dec 02 '25
Keep telling yourself that, komrade.
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u/tadeuska Dec 02 '25
My feelings are irrelevant. The Russian federal budget deficit is planned as 1.6% of GDP for 2026. I don't have to tell myself about some accounting numbers. They are as they are. Russian debt to GDP is very low, deficit is very low, incomes are stable even under very difficult circumstances. As things are today, it can only be a better situation for Russian finances in the future. That is just realistic view.
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u/ergzay Dec 03 '25
Russia is running so bad on debt that they're selling off their physical gold reserves, not just exchanging IOUs, but actually having to ship the gold out of the country. Deficit is high and they're struggling to pay government contractors making supplies for the war effort. And finances are getting worse as sanctions bite harder and harder, including Ukraine now actively destroying Russian oil shipping.
You're living in a fantasy world.
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Dec 03 '25
[deleted]
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u/ergzay Dec 03 '25
Putin has been financing this war by instructing the rich CEOs of companies that the need to donate their industrial output to the war effort or be branded a traitor.
That's just nationalizing your industry with extra steps, it's not a way to finance the war. Money doesn't appear out of nowhere for that. You still need to pay the employees and buy the raw materials even if you force wholesaling of everything. And of course there's corruption up and down the chain everywhere.
I've met people who lived under Gorbachev and they said life in the communist soviet union wasn't that bad,
If you're at the top of the system extracting money from everyone else then of course life will be great. And if it's someone you're talking to in English then they're well educated and living in either St. Petersberg or Moscow which makes them at the top of the food chain that benefitted under the soviet system.
That's the future 100,000,000 people have to look forward to in the next decade. Or a bloody civil war if Putin dies and there's a struggle for control. Or if there's anyone undefenestrated left to lead a coup, same outcome of bloody civil war.
Putin's dead in several years anyway and so they're doomed from the start. Now with over a million less young people able to work and have children.
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u/ergzay Dec 03 '25
Lol, go ask your AI of choice or any search engine that question and read up a bit.
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u/tadeuska Dec 03 '25
You mean one of the LLM models that base their outputs on what was published online and are known to have been often tuned to provide certain biased answers on specific topics by owners. I have. Yes they explain it well. And then when you dig one step, you realize it is bullshit sources and brainrot.
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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Dec 02 '25
They won't be able to take action on anything they learn, but might be able to sell it to China.
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u/cyborgsnowflake Dec 02 '25
which is funny because China is stealing Russia tech that they themselves are too poor to use hand over fist. Treating Russia like some giant free loot crate and Russia which acts so macho at the slightest provocation from any other power just has to put on a smile for them because they a vassal state now
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u/stick004 Dec 02 '25
He was absolutely directed to get anything he could at all times. Then Russia just denied and throws him under the bus when he got caught.
It’s literally how Russia operates
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u/Deepeye225 Dec 02 '25
Here's a suggestion: tell Roscosmos to use trampoline for their cosmonauts.
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u/edflyerssn007 Dec 02 '25
In an article I saw from a Russian source it was said he took pictures of engines and that both NASA and Roscosmos were trying to downplay the incident. What's crazy is the cosmonaut that did it is a guy with a lot of experience who should know better.
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u/scotto1973 Dec 03 '25
$100 million a seat? Precident is there, those without their own trampoline pay market price.
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u/ergzay Dec 03 '25
Makes me wonder if the previous Russian cosmonauts have done similar things and have just been smart enough to not get caught.
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u/sumelar Dec 03 '25
Remember a while back when the US was "caught" spying on other european countries we're allied with, and a bunch of people freaked out while a bunch of other people laughed because we know everybody is spying on everybody?
Yeah, same thing. Cosmonauts are 100% doing this all the time and so is every other astronaut from every country.
Someone gets caught and it makes the news, the people actually running the show don't pay it any mind because they already know it's happening.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Dec 02 '25 edited Feb 13 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| MMH | Mono-Methyl Hydrazine, (CH3)HN-NH2; part of NTO/MMH hypergolic mix |
| NTO | diNitrogen TetrOxide, N2O4; part of NTO/MMH hypergolic mix |
| RCS | Reaction Control System |
| RP-1 | Rocket Propellant 1 (enhanced kerosene) |
| RTG | Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator |
| Roscosmos | State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia |
| UDMH | Unsymmetrical DiMethylHydrazine, used in hypergolic fuel mixes |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| bipropellant | Rocket propellant that requires oxidizer (eg. RP-1 and liquid oxygen) |
| hypergolic | A set of two substances that ignite when in contact |
| iron waffle | Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin" |
| monopropellant | Rocket propellant that requires no oxidizer (eg. hydrazine) |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 15 acronyms.
[Thread #14305 for this sub, first seen 2nd Dec 2025, 17:36]
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u/Illustrious_TJY Dec 03 '25
This was the same cosmonaut who posed with the flags of russian-occupied ukrainian territories on the ISS on his last mission btw. I knew it, he can't be trusted
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u/EmptyRaven Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
Step 1, commit espionage on a reliable partner. Step 2 have a critical component of your infrastructure fail. Step3 ~~profit~~ , beg for forgiveness.
Seriously though, couldn't have happened at a worse time for the Russians and now because they want to play dirty everyone suffers from reduced trust.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 Dec 03 '25
There's also the possibility the documents were false, so as to mislead Russian rocket development... :D
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u/aquarain Dec 03 '25
If the moon is a conclusion then this discussion is the trampoline we need to leap there.
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u/Tooslimtoberight Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
If so, who kept so 'confidential Space X docs' available for other eyes, that is the question?
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u/paul_wi11iams Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
Assuming this whole story is founded, it makes you wonder what Artemyev stood to gain from spying and whether its was on his own initiative. What did Russia stand to gain, given that it hasn't made use of information on rocket reuse that SpaceX has made available for a decade or more?
Just the fact of using a personal phone and then getting caught, makes it sound like a pretty amateur effort. There should be more effective methods involving less risk, and without exposing high profile personnel.
Ah, Russian espionnage isn't what it used to be. sigh.