Lessons learned from the ISS: enabling future space flight collaboration for US and Russia

The International Space Station (ISS) has seen Americans and Russians actively work hand in hand over the past decade. Scheduled to be deorbited in 2024, the future of spaceflight collaboration after its end remains uncertain. Lessons learned from collaboration on ISS are key to proposing areas for cooperation in similar endeavors moving forward. In spite of the current state of relations, U.S.-Russia relations could be significantly improved by increasing the current level of collaboration between both countries in the engineering and legal domains. Additionally, other factors that would help to set a robust framework for space collaboration include enhancing cooperation in the private-public domain, and opening ways towards a new key collaborator: China. To understand the drivers that would enable these hypotheses, it is important to outline the limits of current collaboration and look for opportunities for improvement in a potential future international space station after the ISS. The Deep Space Gateway in particular presents a relevant case study for such evaluation. The goal of laying out an overview of the current interfaces is tomotivate policy makers and key players within NASA and Roscosmos to trigger the proper mechanisms to create opportunities for engineers to work together towards further exploration of Deep Space. These mechanisms would further strengthen, and extend the present day ties, and eventually lead to building a functional cislunar international station, which would set the example on the achievements possible through U.S.-Russia collaboration.