Crew-11 Must Wait Another Day, While Duffy Meets With Bakanov

Weather prevented Crew-11 from getting off the launch pad today, but they will try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy was at the attempted launch and met with his Russian counterpart, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov. It was the first in-person meeting between the top NASA and Russian space agency heads in eight years.

The day began with a 90 percent “go” weather forecast, but Florida is well known for sudden summer storms and they literally rained on Crew-11’s parade today.

Less than 20 minutes before the scheduled 12:09 pm ET launch, the four crew members in Crew Dragon Endeavour atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket were notified that forecasters were keeping an eye on a storm cloud that just appeared north of the pad. At one minute seven seconds before liftoff, “hold, hold, hold” was called and the launch was scrubbed for the day. NASA plans to try again tomorrow at 11:43 am ET.

The international crew is composed of two NASA astronauts, Zena Cardman (commander) and Mike Fincke (pilot), and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, both mission specialists.

U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have flown to the International Space Station (ISS) on each other’s spacecraft since the beginning of the program to ensure that at least one person from each country is always aboard to operate the interdependent U.S. and Russian segments. Despite geopolitical strains, the “seat swaps” have remained intact with just one exception, Soyuz MS-21 in March 2022, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most recently NASA’s Jonny Kim arrived aboard the ISS on Russia’s Soyuz MS-27 in April and Platonov is on Crew-11.

Day-to-day interactions among the NASA and Roscosmos ISS teams on the ground and in space have continued uninterrupted and high-level NASA officials routinely attend Soyuz launches, but not the NASA Administrator. The last in-person meeting between the Administrator of NASA and the Director General of Roscosmos was in October 2018 when Jim Bridenstine met with Dmitry Rogozin in Russia. Bridenstine invited Rogozin to the United States in 2019, but rescinded it after strong negative reaction from Congress. Rogozin was under sanctions for his role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 when he was Russia’s Minister of Aerospace and Defense. Rogozin was replaced by Yuri Borisov in July 2022. Bakanov succeeded Borisov earlier this year.

It was Russia’s TASS news agency that broke the news that Bakanov had been invited to the launch and would attend. In a later story, TASS quoted Duffy as saying the United States views space as an area of “international partnership” and despite disagreements on terrestrial matters, when it comes to the ISS “we don’t throw those relationships away.” TASS also said that Bakanov will visit Johnson Space Center, home to the U.S. astronaut corps and where Russian and other international crew members train for flights on American spacecraft.

Today, TASS quoted Bakanov as saying the “conversation went very well” and they agreed “to continue using the ISS until 2028” and they would “work on the deorbiting process until 2030.”

Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov has said that he and Acting NASA Director Sean Duffy agreed to continue using the International Space Station until 2028:https://t.co/0ju6m3i438 pic.twitter.com/ZlbCJCPOCf

— TASS (@tassagency_en) July 31, 2025

NASA’s updated press release with details about the post-launch press conference tomorrow includes Bakanov as one of the participants. [Update, August 2: NASA tells SpacePolicyOnline today that the press release was in error. Bakanov left KSC on July 31.]

NASA has said little about the Duffy-Bakanov meeting. Duffy is the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, but on July 9 was appointed by President Trump to additionally serve as Acting Administrator of NASA. In a statement today, NASA said only that he and Bakanov met to “discuss continued cooperation and collaboration in space.”

“On Thursday, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy met with Dmitry Bakanov, head of Roscosmos, to discuss continued cooperation and collaboration in space. This was the first meeting between the two leaders. The discussion took place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of a planned launch for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station. Two NASA astronauts, a JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut, and a Roscosmos cosmonaut are a part of the mission. Launch was scrubbed due to weather, and the next attempt is 11:43 a.m. EDT on Friday, Aug. 1.” — NASA statement

Duffy has been on the job at NASA for only three weeks and his views on the agency and its priorities are relatively unknown apart from a few posts on X (@SecDuffyNASA). In an interview on Fox News last night and a discussion with NASA communications specialist Antonia Jaramillo today, however, he left no doubt that human exploration is this Administration’s priority.

Crew-11 maintains our dominance in low Earth orbit and gives us the information we need to reach even farther.

President Trump is committed to seeing America return to the Moon and Artemis is how we get there. And this time, we’ll stay. pic.twitter.com/2u8s2OU22c

— NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy (@SecDuffyNASA) July 31, 2025

Trump restarted American efforts to return astronauts to the Moon during his first term. Attempts by President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush didn’t get very far, and President Barack Obama eschewed the Moon and directed NASA to focus on putting astronauts in orbit around Mars in the 2030s instead.

Trump restored the Moon as a steppingstone to Mars in 2017, his first year in office, and initiated the Artemis program in 2019.  He wanted NASA to put astronauts on the lunar surface in 2024, the end of what he expected would be his second term. Trump lost the 2020 election, but President Joe Biden retained the Artemis program. The schedule slipped, however, and with Trump returning to the White House, it looks as though he will be President when the next NASA astronauts step on the Moon if the current schedule holds.

First, though, a crew of four will make a test flight around the Moon on Artemis II in 2026. As Duffy excitedly pointed out, that will happen during America’s 250th anniversary. The first landing will be Artemis III in 2027.

Duffy told Jaramillo space station missions like Crew-11 are “critically important” because what’s learned on the ISS will “get us to the Moon and then from the Moon to Mars.”

We’re going to the Moon. We’re going back on America’s 250th birthday. Artemis II is going to launch. We’re going around the Moon and back. We’re not going to land in that one, but then Artemis III, we’re going back to the Moon, we’re going to land. We’re going to stay for six days. The longest time before that was three days.

And then from there we’re going to start deploying all of the assets we need to build our base and we’re going to stay on the Moon. We’re not planting our flag and leaving. We’re going to stay, learn, and then to go Mars.  Again, there’s critical real estate on the Moon. We want to claim that real estate for ourselves and our partners, which is going to be critical to be successful in that mission.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits countries from claiming “real estate” on the Moon and other celestial bodies in the sense of declaring national sovereignty, but the U.S. position is that countries and companies may take possession of materials such as rocks or minerals. The Artemis Accords, formulated during the first Trump Administration, set forth 10 principles for responsible behavior on the Moon.  Senegal just became the 56th signatory last week. Duffy wasn’t present at the signing ceremony at NASA Headquarters, but issued a statement saying he was “proud to further President Trump’s strong legacy of global cooperation in space.”

Cooperation is only one side of the coin, however. There’s competition, too. His bottom line to Hannity was the need to get back to the Moon before China gets there — an oft-cited goal by both Republicans and Democrats.  He doesn’t see a need for NASA to study the environment, however, telling the Fox News host: “we’ve heard of NASA focused on earth science and global warming. No, no. We are space exploration. We’re going back to the Moon. We’re gonna have a base camp. I think what we learn there is going to instruct us as we go to Mars as well and who knows from there and beyond.”

 

This article has been updated.

The original version of this article showed that NASA’s press release listing participants in the August 1 post-launch press briefing included Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov. NASA told told SpacePolicyOnline.com on August 2 that the press release was in error. Bakanov left KSC on July 31.