JOHN F. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER /Florida/, December 20. /TASS/. Spaceflights to the Moon and Mars would be impossible without NASA’s cooperation with Russian colleagues, NASA’s International Space Station Program acting deputy chief scientist Bob Dempsey told TASS Monday.
"We have a lot of cooperation. We will have to continue to do that, you know, as we continue the space station to whenever its end of life is, and you know, going to the moon and Mars," Dempsey said. "There's no way we can do that without cooperation with the Russians. I think there'll be a part of that too."
He noted that sometimes one side brings hardware to the ISS for the other side to use. In particular, that is the case with the Plasma Kristall experiment, which involves injecting fine dust particles in plasma, which turns the dust into highly charged particles.
"We collaborate like that all the time," the NASA specialist said.