Fast track to merger? In lieu of cash, Russia could give ESA increased access to its Soyuz rockets. Credit: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Russian and European space officials are discussing the possibility of Russia joining the 15-member European Space Agency (ESA) — a move that would put ESA on a par with NASA in terms of spaceflight experience and access to orbit.

Jean-Jacques Dordain: holding talks with Russia. Credit: P. SEBIROT/ESA

Although no formal offer has been tendered, a flurry of meetings and public statements in the past few months suggest that both sides are exploring the idea. At the Berlin Air Show last week, the new head of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (PKA), Anatoly Perminov, told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass that he supports a merger in principle, but that Russia would want full membership of ESA. Perminov, who formerly headed the Russian military space programme, said he has been discussing the details with Jean-Jacques Dordain, who took over as director-general of ESA last July.

Keen: Anatoly Perminov wants full membership. Credit: A. NATRUSK/REUTERS

Dordain proposed, in a document called Agenda 2007 released last October, that Russia be admitted as an associate member of ESA, with a status similar to that of Canada. Associate members can participate in some agency projects and decisions, but do not have to adhere fully to agency rules. These include the ‘juste retour’ policy, whereby members receive ESA contracts in direct proportion to how much money they put into agency projects.

Money is precisely Russia's problem. Although the country has extensive experience in human space flight and some of the most reliable rockets in the world, it is chronically short of funding, and might have difficulty paying its contribution as a full ESA member. But “where there's a will, there's a way”, says Giovanni Bignami, director of CESR, the laboratory of space astrophysics in Toulouse, France, and chair of ESA's Space Science Advisory Committee. ESA, for example, could rewrite its rules to allow member states to pay in kind, with services instead of cash.

ESA has been building steadily closer ties with Russia, and is constructing a launch pad at its site in Kourou, French Guiana, for the Russian Soyuz rocket, with launches to begin in 2007. The European agency currently has 15 member states, with Greece and Luxembourg signed on to become full members by the end of next year.

If the juste retour policy and other details can be worked out so that Russia can join, Bignami says that it would be “an enormous success for ESA”. And Russia would get a steady customer for its space industry. Cooperation with the United States has been complicated in recent years by US national security regulations, which include a law that prohibits NASA from buying Russian space hardware outright, because of concerns that Russia is supplying nuclear technology to Iran.