(CNN) — A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday wearing bright yellow flight suits with blue trim, raising questions about whether the three were showing solidarity with Ukraine by wearing their national colors and rebuke the invasion of their own government.
While it is possible that the suits are a sign of solidarity with Ukraine, there are other possible explanations as well.
The head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, posted images of media coverage speculating that the cosmonauts were supporting Ukraine and said: “Here some cowardly bandits and their Anglo backers don’t know what else to come up with in their information war against Russia”. He added that the crew did not represent Ukraine but wore the colors of his alma mater, Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
“Sometimes the color yellow is just the color yellow. The flight suits of the new crew were designed to match the colors of the emblem of Moscow’s Bauman State Technical University, from which the three cosmonauts graduated. The design of the uniforms was coordinated long before the current events. Seeing the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is just a clinic [en propaganda]”, another Roscosmos official wrote on his Telegram channel called “Closed space”.
Cosmonauts typically choose their flight suits months in advance, which would mean before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s unclear when the cosmonauts selected a yellow and blue color scheme.
“For Soyuz flights, typically the crew meets with the company that makes the suits months before the flight and they are allowed two custom suits,” a NASA astronaut who flew on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft told CNN. to the ISS. “Normally one suit is the same across the crew and the second suit is personal.”
“I think it would be a real challenge to manufacture and launch these (flight suits) at the last minute. However, it is not impossible,” added the astronaut.
When the three cosmonauts arrived at the space station on Friday, they spoke to phone callers, one of whom asked about the color yellow, to which Commander Oleg Artemyev jokingly replied, “We actually had a lot of yellow stuff, so we had to use that. That’s why we had to wear yellow.”
Artemyev and his fellow cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov will spend the next six and a half months aboard the space station.