Oleg Artemyev is said to have been accused of photographing classified documents and rocket equipment at a SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, and then 'smuggling' that information out of the building on his phone in late November. The 54-year-old was scheduled to be part of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, led by NASA, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2026.
Russia's access to global markets dried up after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fallout from the invasion killed several key space partnership between Russia and Europe. Russia's capacity to do new things in space seems to be focused on military programs like anti-satellite weapons.
A Russian satellite crash landed in a field south west of Moscow earlier this month while carrying some unusual cargo: about 1,500 flies, 75 mice, seeds, a bunch of microbes, and various cell tissues. The Bion-M No 2 satellite's mission was to study the impact of space on these critters, but to also test the wild concept - a theory called panspermia - that life came to Earth via microorganisms hitching a ride on a comet, meteor or asteroid.
