Russia has pulled its cosmonaut assigned to an upcoming SpaceX mission over photos taken at the company's training center in California. This was reported by Euronews.
Oleg Artemyev was pulled from Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station after allegations he violated US regulations by photographing SpaceX engines and other sensitive documentation.
Georgi Trishkin, a space industry analyst, said an interagency investigation into the incident has been launched. The alleged violations occurred during training at SpaceX's Hawthorne facility, where Artemyev used his mobile phone to photograph sensitive objects. According to Trishkin, an experienced cosmonaut would hardly have made such a serious mistake unintentionally.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that 54-year-old Artemyev will be replaced by Andrei Fedyaev, who will fly on SpaceX's Crew-6 mission in 2023. The company said the change was made "in connection with Oleg Artemyev's transfer to another job."
Artemyev has completed three space flights and spent 560 days in orbit. He has been a deputy in the Moscow City Duma since 2019. Fedyaev, 43, spent 186 days aboard the space station during the Crew-6 mission, which launched in March 2023 and returned in September 2023.
The Crew-12 mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than February 15, 2026, aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
The incident comes as space cooperation remains one of the few areas in which Russia and the West maintain a working relationship despite Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In July, NASA and Roscosmos agreed to extend operations of the International Space Station until 2028, with plans to handle the station's deorbiting by 2030
Former Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has repeatedly threatened to pull Russia out of the ISS program in early 2022, warning that U.S. sanctions could lead to a crash of the station on U.S. or European soil. In February 2022, he suggested that without Russian cooperation, the ISS could fall into an "uncontrolled deorbit" and questioned "who will save the ISS" from such a scenario.
At the time, NASA officials downplayed Rogozin's threats, with Administrator Bill Nelson criticizing him for his rhetoric while praising the professionalism of other Russian space program officials. Rogozin was removed from his post in July 2022 and replaced by Yuri Borisov. He then declared himself the leader of the volunteer unit "Tsar's Wolves", which is allegedly tasked with testing weapons for Russian troops in Ukraine.
The European Space Agency ended cooperation with Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission in March 2022, and British satellite company OneWeb switched to alternative launch providers after severing ties with the Russian agency.