Truemors
Two day's after Russian forces crossed the border into of Georgia, a Cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station took photographs of the South Ossetia region. According to the ISS Daily Report:
...working from the discretionary task list, Oleg Kononenko conducted another session of the Russian GFI-8 "Uragan" (hurricane) earth-imaging program, using the D2X digital camera with the F800 telephoto lens and the HVR-Z1J SONY video camera. Uplinked target areas were glaciers on the north slope of the main Caucasus Ridge, the Dombai region, after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus...
These images were taken in direct contravention of a standing agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, that the station only be used for civilian activities.
"The Space Station together with its additions of evolutionary capability will remain a civil station, and its operation and utilization will be for peaceful purposes, in accordance with international law," reads Article 14 of the agreement.
Apparently with that language in mind, Russia's space agency Roscosmos informed the U.S. space agency that Kononenko's actions two days after Russian forces moved into South Ossetia were not military in nature.
"Roscosmos informed us that the pictures were requested to support potential humanitarian activities in the area, including serious water resource management issues," said a spokesman for NASA's Office of External Relations, who added that NASA was not pursuing the matter.
While the fighting in South Ossetia has severely strained U.S./Russian relations, the nature of the two nations' cooperation on the ISS makes it extremely difficult for either side to withdraw from the 1998 agreement.
The U.S. depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles docked to the station for crew rescue in case of an emergency in orbit, and will rely on them at least temporarily for crew access to the station once the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010. But NASA provides essential utilities on the station, including most electrical power, and Russia needs those systems and the U.S. astronauts who are trained to operate them to conduct on-board operations.
I can't imagine that an 800mm lens could capture images of any military use from 180 miles away, but these photographs can do nothing to ease the tensions between America and Russia.
With both countries locked into co-dependency aboard the ISS then perhaps, as we stand on the brink of a new Cold War, the station will prove a beacon of cooperation between nations. One can only hope.
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