Roscosmos replaces cosmonaut on next Crew Dragon mission to ISS

WASHINGTON — Roscosmos has replaced a cosmonaut assigned to the next Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station for reasons neither it nor NASA will disclose.

Roscosmos announced Dec. 2 that Andrey Fedyaev would replace Oleg Artemyev on the upcoming Crew-12 mission, scheduled to launch as soon as February.

The agency’s social media post offered little explanation for the change. “This decision was made due to Oleg Artemyev’s transfer to another job,” it said. It is unusual to change a crew assignment so close to launch for reasons other than health or performance issues.

A NASA spokesperson on Dec. 3 deferred questions about the reassignment to Roscosmos. That agency rarely responds to Western media inquiries.

Artemyev is a veteran cosmonaut who has spent 560 days in space on three long-duration missions to the ISS, all on Soyuz spacecraft. While several Russian cosmonauts have flown on Crew Dragon, Artemyev would have been the first with previous spaceflight experience.

Neither NASA nor Roscosmos has provided details about the decision, but Russian media have reported claims that Artemyev was removed from the mission after taking images of SpaceX hardware and documentation during Crew Dragon training at the company’s Hawthorne, California, headquarters.

It is unclear whether he took the images as part of a deliberate attempt to collect sensitive information or for more innocuous reasons. Either way, it would be a violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, the strict export control rules that cover launch vehicles and other spacecraft components. Violating ITAR could result in Artemyev’s visa being revoked.

Georgy Trishkin, a Russian space analyst who was among the first to report Artemyev’s removal from the mission, said in a Dec. 3 post that Artemyev may have taken the images for use with an online translator or for later posting online. “So, it seems this is a case of negligence, not espionage,” Trishkin concluded.

With the reassignment, Fedyaev will become the first Russian cosmonaut to fly twice on Crew Dragon. His first spaceflight was on the Crew-6 mission in 2023, spending six months on the station.

NASA has yet to announce official crew assignments for Crew-12, despite the mission launching as soon as mid-February. The European Space Agency has said one of its astronauts, Sophie Adenot, will fly on Crew-12. NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir have also been training for the mission.