That NASA/Ukraine Space Document Thing You Probably Did Not Hear About

Keith’s note: There is a photo posted the other day by NASA titled NASA Admin Signs Joint Statement with Space Agency of Ukraine that says “NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and Deputy Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Volodymyr Mikheiev, display their signed joint statements on civil space cooperation between NASA and the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Friday April 21, 2023 at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington DC. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) Date Created:2023-04-21”. Cool stuff. In a time of war America and Ukraine find a cool way to reiterate their solidarity on peaceful activities. Alas, There is no NASA press release about this listed – before or after the event. Nor a media advisory that I can find. If you search for “Ukraine” at NASA.gov all you get are old stories about grain. I can’t seem to find any stories posted at NASA.gov by looking around NASA.gov.

But I did find this one but I only found it via Google (outside of NASA) because I knew very specifically what to look for and the date of the event. This hidden posting mentions a “statement of intent on civil space cooperation” – whatever that means since no text of the document has been posted Of course if you go to NASA’s Office of International and Interagency Relations (OIIR) there is no mention of this event whatsoever. Nor is there any mention of the South Korean president’s visit or the up coming Czech Artemis Accords thing on 3 May or a zillion other things – but OIIR doesn’t care about the whole transparency and accuracy things as we already know.

As for news reports about the NASA/Ukraine event, The New Voice of Ukraine posted “Ukrainian, US space agencies sign joint statement, says envoy“. And the Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S. tweeted about it but there is no mention at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. Otherwise no one seems to care about this news – especially NASA. Meanwhile former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly met with the president of Ukraine a few days before and NASA publicly denied that a flash in the sky over Kyiv was an American satellite. It is not as if someone at NASA PAO can’t pay minimal attention to the news, and think how to best present these things to the American people, is it? Nah. They just do the bare minimum since no one on the 9th floor cares about follow-up after the photo op.