NASA head says Russia is still committed to International Space Station

• U.S. and Russia's relationship in space was already significantly frayed after Moscow tested an anti-satellite missile in November, debris from which threatened the crew of the ISS, NASA said.
• The U.S. and Russia have collaborated in civilian capacity in space for decades, primarily through the ISS — which can't function without both countries participating.

What they're saying: Nelson pointed to Russia's plan to launch three cosmonauts to the ISS on Friday as evidence of its desire to continue cooperating with the U.S. on the station.

• "The Russians are still committed to the International Space Station by virtue of the fact that they're going to lift off from Baikonur today," Nelson said on CNBC Friday.
• Nelson told AP that Rogozin "spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us."
• "The other people that work in the Russian civilian space program, they’re professional. They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control."

The big picture: Roscosmos stopped all Soyuz rocket launches from the European Space Agency's primary spaceport in February in protest of sanctions, resulting in the suspension of ExoMars, Europe's first-ever rover mission to Mars that was set to launch this year.

• American astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who broke the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days on Tuesday, is set to return back to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on March 30 with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.
• Roscosmos has said that Vande Hei will return on the capsule, though it has also posted edited — and apparently comical — videos on social media showing the cosmonauts leaving him behind and detaching the Russian portion of the ISS altogether.

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