Open Forum on US-Russia Cooperation in Space: Past, Present and Future

It's my great pleasure to welcome you to today's Open Forum event which commemorates 200 years of U.S.-Russian relations and highlights one of the great successes of our relationship, our bilateral cooperation on space exploration issues. I'd like to welcome our featured speakers, our former Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Pickering, distinguished scientist Richard Garwin, and eminent physicist Roald Sagdeev. All three have made important contributions to the field of U.S.-Russia relations and to the field of space cooperation.

At the risk of stealing thunder from the speakers, I'd like to share a few thoughts on space and why bilateral space cooperation is important. First, space exploration is...well, rocket science. It's an extremely challenging and unforgiving environment for both robots and humans - and therefore very dearly bought in terms of time and treasure.

Given the difficulties inherent in space exploration, it makes sense for those engaged in this difficult venture to share information and pool efforts when ever possible. While countries can successfully pursue space programs on their own, as the USSR and the U.S. did in the past, and as several countries ( China and India come to mind) are doing now, international cooperation has a powerful logic, particularly in an era of limited funds. I'd also like to note that for space exploration cooperation to be successful, it must be driven by lasting scientific/technical interests and equivalent investment.

Even at the peak of the Cold War, NASA and its Soviet counterparts cooperated on a technical level through various data exchanges. The US and the USSR signed high a level bilateral agreement on cooperation in space in 1970s. This eventually led to the first joint human space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and engagement on a wide array of other cooperative programs, including, of course the International Space Station.

We work well and closely with Russia on the ISS – so closely, in fact, that NASA has an office at Roskosmos, the Russian Space Agency. And this partnership with Russia paid huge dividends when the space shuttle fleet was grounded after the Columbia accident in early 2003. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft was the only remaining means of reaching the space station, and so it rescued the stranded American and Russian astronauts, and provided transport of people and supplies to International Space Station until the U.S. was able to resume the shuttle program.

NASA and the Russian Space Agency Roskomos also cooperate in numerous scientific projects in the fields of earth and space science. These projects include using space-based sensors to measure the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere, ocean, land surface, biology, and cooperative work on Mars exploration missions. These missions are important to expanding mutual scientific knowledge, and give us invaluable experience in working together on a people-to-people level. We hope to cooperate successfully with Russia in future programs as the United States implements its Vision for Space Exploration in the years to come.

Given both countries' expertise in space, we also have very successful joint commercial ventures. I'm happy to say that last year we completed a U.S.-Russia technical safeguards agreement which provides a basis for continued cooperation in the commercial use of outer space. Such commercial projects include, for example, Sea Launch, a commercial launch vehicle that is actually a four-way venture between not only U.S. and Russian companies, but Norwegian and Ukrainian companies as well. And I want to recognize that Ambassador Pickering's former employer, Boeing, plays an important role as the American partner in this project. Another commercial joint ventures is the RD-180 engine, which is produced in Russia as a joint venture between Pratt & Whitney and Russian rocket engine company Energomash, and is used in Lockheed Martin's Atlas V rocket.

We hope that ventures such as these can provide a model for further commercial cooperation between the U.S. and Russia . They demonstrate that private investment and innovation, and not just government-to-government programs, are vital to the future of space exploration..

Lastly, as we commemorate two hundred years of U.S.-Russia relations and look to the future, people-to-people exchanges are increasingly important to cement the next two hundred years of relationships. We seek in this anniversary year to expand these human relationships which often lead to greater understanding of each other's views and culture. With Russian cosmonauts training in Houston and American astronauts training at Star City outside Moscow , NASA and Roskomos are paving the way toward this type of greater understanding.

To our three speakers, we thank you for your contributions to U.S.-Russia relations, to science, and for being with us today.