Retd NASA astronaut compares new US rocket to Russia's Soyuz after halted engine supply

Grilling Russia for cutting rocket engine supply to the US, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly posted a picture drawing a comparison of rockets built by Russia and his country. In his Twitter post, Kelly shared the image featuring a Russian-made Soyuz rocket beside NASA’s brand new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Russian space agency Roscosmos had announced earlier this month that it is blocking the shipment of rocket engines to the US and would no longer provide servicing of the already shipped engines. 

The picture posted by Kelly shows the SLS rocket reaching a total height of over 90 metres with the Orion spacecraft mounted on top as compared to the Soyuz rocket which measures only 40 metres. Needless to say, the power of the rockets also has a considerable difference. The Soyuz family of rockets, whose origin dates back to the 1960s, are small-scale launch vehicles to deliver crew and cargo to the low-Earth orbit. The SLS rocket on the other hand has been built for missions to the Moon and is capable of carrying 143 tons of payload. 

The SLS rocket is being developed by NASA for the upcoming uncrewed Artemis I mission, which is the first under the agency’s Artemis program to land the first woman on the Moon. On March 3, Russian space agency Roscosmos had revealed via Twitter, "Roskosmos will not service the remaining 24 RD-180 engines in the US, and the RD-181 will stop deliveries (sic)".

'Let them fly on broomsticks'

While announcing Russia's decision to cut rocket engine supplies to the US, Roscosmos' Director-General Dmitry Rogozin had said that the latter can use broomsticks instead. "In a situation like this, we cannot supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what", Rogozin had said in a TV interview. 

Responding to Moscow's move, US Air Force secretary Frank Kendall had said that its decision to stop supplying rocket engines to the US would have no impact on ‘national security launches’. The engines Russia has supplied to the US are the RD-180, which are used in United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket for launch missions. ULA spokesperson Jessica Rye had said in a statement, as per SpaceNews, "As we manage the transition to the Vulcan launch system, all necessary RD-180 engines to execute the Atlas 5 fly-out are safely stored in our factory in Decatur, Alabama".