NASA is suspending space collaborations with Russia in light of the Ukraine conflict but will keep communicating with the Russian government for the International Space Station.
The American agency announced the change Wednesday evening, citing Russia's violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. The suspension of communication between NASA and Russia means officials won't be visiting each other's countries or having meetings, teleconferences and email exchanges, USA TODAY reported.
NASA has had to work with Russia to travel into space since the American space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. The agency hopes to become independent once more and appealed for more funding in an official statement.
"NASA is laser focused on a plan to return human spaceflight launches to American soil, and end our reliance on Russia to get into space," said a NASA blog post shared on Google+. "This has been a top priority of the Obama Administration's for the past five years, and had our plan been fully funded, we would have returned American human spaceflight launches--and the jobs they support--back to the United States next year."
The current level of funding approved by Congress should allow for a launch from United States soil in 2017, NASA said.
"The choice here is between fully funding the plan to bring space launches back to America or continuing to send millions of dollars to the Russians," said the post. "It's that simple."
Two American astronauts are on ISS after traveling there on the Russian spacecraft Soyuz.
NASA astronaut Steven Swanson recently arrived with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, joining NASA's Rick Mastracchio, Japan's Koichi Wakata and Russia's Mikhail Tyurin, who are currently living on the ISS and are scheduled to return to Earth in May. Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev are scheduled to remain in orbit on the ISS until September.
Just last month, the American-Russian collaboration seemed to be running smoothly despite international tension in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.
The U.S. and Russia "partnership in space remains intact and normal," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in early March, according to The Associated Press.
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