Russian Astronaut Kicked Out of the US For Stealing Proprietary SpaceX Designs (behindtheblack.com) 72
Slashdot readers jmurtari and schwit1 shares news that a Russian astronaut slated for the next Dragon mission to the ISS has been removed after being caught photographing proprietary SpaceX hardware. UNITED24 reports: Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev has been removed from the prime crew of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station and replaced by fellow Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev after sources alleged he photographed confidential SpaceX materials in California in violation of U.S. export control rules, according to The Insider on December 2. The outlet reported that Trishkin also said NASA did not want the controversy around Artemyev to become public, while Artemyev was removed from training at SpaceX's Hawthorne California, facility last week after allegedly photographing SpaceX engines and other internal materials on his phone and taking them off-site.
Erm (Score:2)
So you can drive it but you cannot look at it?
Re: Erm (Score:5, Informative)
Rockets that are capable of delivering a nuclear weapon into orbit, and their components, are legally defined as export controlled munitions. Taking pictures of export controlled munitions on a personal device is almost certainly going to get you into some pretty deep shit, even if you have no intention of exporting. Federal law, see ITAR.
Re: Erm (Score:5, Informative)
These people aren't hired by Elon. They're brought in by NASA in cooperation with Russian authorities.
SpaceX's only relationship with them is that they're a NASA subcontractor taking them to space.
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Yes, because Russians are key partners when it comes to operating the ISS. They own and control about half of it after all.
It's in the name. International Space Station. Not American Space Station.
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In space exploration? Since a very long time, Mir was Russian operated but visited by astronauts from all over the world.
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From what I heard it was like riding around in a Yugo in space. Have plenty of duct tape handy.
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It was literally the most advanced space station of its time. But ok.
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Yes, just forget the oxygen generator fire on MIR and it was groovy
I have to admit that the actions of the crew were heroic, but it really doesn't stand as a 'stamp of approval' for the station itself.
Re: Erm (Score:2)
It's "Ukraine" not "the Ukraine"
This arrangement has been in place since the 90s.
It isn't top secret, or otherwise classified, or even sensitive. It's ITAR.
Now run along back to your igloo little wildling, the adults are talking.
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That's the stupidest thing I've seen posted all day.
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It's a couple days later now. That truly was the stupidest thing that day.
Re: Erm (Score:5, Informative)
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Without a doubt. Forget that he's even a cosmonaut: Nobody is going to be able to get anywhere near any of that equipment without it having been repeatedly made clear to them that they aren't to take any pictures. Full stop. He HAD to have known better. Occasionally you hear of people who think they can just do it anyway. Usually there's no ill intent, but there will still be some sort of consequence regardless, whether big or small (i.e. getting booted from the facility.) You'll end up on the wrong side of
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> So you can drive it but you cannot look at it?
Is there a difference between riding on a rocket and giving Russia the technical knowledge to build a thousand of them?
Personally I think Russia could figure it out if they wanted to but that's not why the rules are in place.
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Giving Russia credit for things developed in the Soviet Union is a bit of a stretch
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Fun fact, a large percentage of the Soviet space program was developed in Ukraine... Russia calls itself self-reliant now, but acts incompetent
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Artemyev was removed from training at SpaceX’s Hawthorne California, facility last week after allegedly photographing SpaceX engines and other internal materials on his phone and taking them off-site.
This is what they call "espionage". I guess what happened is something like this scene [youtu.be] (about 2 minutes in) out of Dr. Strangelove.
So was he spying, or (Score:5, Insightful)
Was he just being a rocket geek? I'm assuming he wasn't just photographing the engines, but there's not a lot of detail here.
If I was in close proximity to a space rocket, I'd probably want to shoot pictures like crazy.
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Was he just being a rocket geek?
Who knows, he has apparently taken a bunch of videos of various components of Schpaze Yikes from various angles:
https://www.youtube.com/@OlegM... [youtube.com]
But then it really depends on his FSB/SVR rank, which is not public.
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Artemyev: This clumsy fool tried to plant that ridiculous camera on me.
Turgidson: Yeah, you bet your sweets, Mr. Commie. Look at this, Mr. Musk. This lousy commie rat was taking pictures with this thing. Of the SpaceX engines!
Artemyev: This clumsy fool attempted to plant that ridiculous camera on me.
Turgidson: That's a damn lie! I saw him, with my own eyes!
Trishkin: Gentlemen, this is outrageous. I have never heard of such behavior in NASA before.
Re: So was he spying, or (Score:4)
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> Was he just being a rocket geek?
90% likely but the 10% difference is why there are rules that cannot be broken.
He signed up for obeying the rules, so it was a dumb move.
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Why was he given access to such info? (Score:2)
If he wasnt allowed to copy / read / see that info, why was he allowed access?
What if he was one of those with "photographic memory"? In which case once he sees it, you can consider the info as copied anyway, without needing a camera or anything else.
photographic memory does not exist (Score:4)
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Regardless it exists or not, all someone has to do is remember a couple of details are tell their people about it. You never know how much help that may provide to the other side.
And again, why was he given access to such material?
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Being a passenger in Falcon/Dragon being allowed to take pictures of export controlled parts of Falcon/Dragon. This isn't rocket science and you should be able to understand that.
Photographic memory doesn't include being able to determine the dimensions or other many other aspects of objects that pictures can nor does it imply being able to produce an accurate drawing from memory.
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If you read the link, read the article, clicked on the link that it shows as the source, you get this headline :
Russian Cosmonaut Allegedly Photographed Confidential SpaceX Docs, Removed From NASA Crew-12 Mission
And if you clicked the link on that, to the russia source, google translate states the following :
Headline :
Cosmonaut Artemyev was expelled from the crew of the Crew-12. He photographed SpaceX documents and “brought out in the phone” classified information – sources
And part of the
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If you believe that russian sources are reliable you also believe that a female NASA astronaut drilled a hole in a Soyuz because she was homesick, that russian soldiers were not offically involved in seizing Crimea, that Zelensky is a Satan worshipping Nazi, that the russian AF has shot down 10 times more Ukranian jets than they have ever had in service, that many russians who crossed Putin died by being crushed from falling out of ground floor windows, that rapists and murderers were transformed into angel
Idiocy (Score:2)
So they replaced one russian spy with ... another?
Re: Idiocy (Score:2)
Yes, you see this other one isn't a spy, the first one is.
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Yes, first you frame the innocent person for a crime they did not commit, then take advantage of the 'sudden change' to insert your agent
If you want to see examples, just look at the trump administration firing essential personnel, then hiring stooges from the heritage foundation when positions have to be filled
I'll let AI explain
It is widely reported that the current Trump administration is pursuing a plan, significantly shaped by the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," to replace non-partisan career civ
long time coming (Score:1, Funny)
As I said https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
AFAIC ruzzia can and needs to go to hell. I hire people, I won't hire a ruzzian, the world needs to get its act together and start using space without them.
They are a scourge, always were, always will be. The American scientists, that passed information to the USSR about nuclear weapon design and manufacturing were not just traitors, they made a gigantic mistake, they truly made the world a much worse place to live. Preferably the soviets and by extension the Chin
He's a cosmonaut, not an astronaut, dude. (Score:1)
Why the fuck would you change his job title like that?
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Same thing "dude". Fucks sake.
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Russia doesn't have the ability for manned spaceflight. ergo they don't have cosmonauts any more.
Tell that to the folks on ISS who ride back and forth on Soyuz all the time. A couple of people went up to ISS from Russia just one week ago.
To be fair, at the moment, future ISS launches from Russia won't be possible because of some launch pad damage incurred by a recent launch, but Russia still has the capability of launching crewed rockets into space from other pads. They just can't send any to ISS right now because its orbital inclination is incompatible with the locations of those other pads while st
Re: He's a cosmonaut, not an astronaut, dude. (Score:2)
That was the only pad Russia had which has the infrastructure necessary to launch humans into space
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That was the only pad Russia had which has the infrastructure necessary to launch humans into space
Not entirely correct. It is the only *active* pad with that infrastructure. There are decommissioned pads that have been used for manned missions in the past. What state they are currently in is an unknown, but it has been speculated that equipment could be salvaged from them to repair the damaged pad.
Hardly surprising (Score:2)
Russian astronaut photographs US hardware to show to his bosses. Wow! Might as well have a headline about the toilet habits of bears or the religion of the pope. The only thing that surprises me is that only now has one of them been caught doing it.
They used rubber shoes to steal secrets (Score:2)
My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember a story similar to this where we invited a Soviet delegation to view our work on the shuttle program. At least I think it was the shuttle program. Regardless, we gave them the tour and everyone made nice with them.
We found out later one of the people on the tour had special shoes whose soles picked up all kinds of particles they walked on. They then analyzed all the metal shavings and whatnot to determine what we were doing and of course tried to replicate it.
China (Score:2)
There's pretty much zero probability Russia could use this to their advantage at this point - their space R&D engineering is pretty much gone. They don't even have a functioning launch platform for human flight at the moment.
The real risk is this being sold to China, or traded to China by Russia for hardware for their war machine against Ukraine.
how about a pardon? (Score:1)
I think with the correct amount of monetary contribution to el Bunko, the boy can be brought back into the space program. It's magic!!!
Recall the Honduran president el Bunko just pardoned? The one who helped ship 100s of tons of cocaine to the U.S. Starting several years ago, his "people" started making the "correct" contributions to "Republicans" (read: el Bunko) and, as if by magic, a pardon appears.
Meanwhile el Bunko is blowing up small vessels off Venezuela arguing they are carrying fentanyl. They aren'
Re: how about a pardon? (Score:2)
No American sources of this information. (Score:1)
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Valid point, some skepticism is warranted. But it stands that the cosmonaut was removed from the mission by US authorities. Could be part of gamesmanship on current Ukraine/USSR Russian negotiations, but that would seem to be weird given another cosmonaut is taking his place. I would likewise wait to here the "dreaded mainstream media" to pick up and add to the story before making any big conclusions.
uh oh (Score:2)
We would certainly be at a disadvantage if Russia was able to copy rockets that constantly blew up shortly after launch.
Wow. This guy could have been (Score:2)
Instead, he pissed it all away. Now, he’s just one of Putin’s nameless, faceless spies, but an incompetent one. He will *not* get a warm welcome back home.
The guy tried to use a cell phone. So dumb.
Handy post (Score:2)
Thanks for making it easy to identify all the Russian assets and bots on /.!
Who got in trouble at SpaceX or NASA? (Score:2)
Allowing a foreign national to access information counts as exporting that information under US Export Control Law. The export happened as soon as he saw the documents, not when he took pictures of them.
What processes failed at SpaceX or NASA to allow this cosmonaut access to export-controlled information? And who is getting in trouble at SpaceX or NASA for the failure of those processes?
Why allow replacement at all? (Score:2)
replaced by fellow Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev
If the Russians are caught in espionage, wouldn't it be a better course of action to terminate their involvement in this flight all together? I don't give a damn if Russia has partial control of the ISS. SpaceX has the right to eject all remaining Russians from the crew due to this case.
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"SpaceX has the right to eject all remaining Russians from the crew due to this case." - Probably not. SpaceX has contracts with NASA. NASA would probably be the deciding party here.
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Misread the title (Score:2)
At first I read it as if he was kicked out of the ISS which would certainly be headline worthy material.
Forget the rocket engines (Score:2)
Shouldn't you folks be trying to steal technical information on how to reinforce concrete? [space.com]