Recent tension over Ukraine has called into question the future of U.S.-Russian cooperation in space. Last week, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia wouldn’t cooperate with the U.S. on the International Space Station beyond 2020. Russia also announced it would ban the export of rocket engines, which are used by the U.S. space program.

Since the end of the Space Shuttle program, Russia has become an essential part of the U.S. space program. NASA has relied on Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS at a cost of $71 million each. However, assuming that Russia has not changed its mind by 2020 NASA should be able to get along without them. According to The Washington Post, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told a press conference that the agency expects their commercial partners to be ready to transport astronauts by 2017.

The ISS is a joint program run by the U.S., Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada. No single partner can terminate the project and no single nation is indispensable to it, according to Bolden. 

To emphasize that point, NASA released a statement on Monday showcasing the progress and accomplishments of the agency’s private sector partners. Those partners include Blue Origin, The Boeing Company, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). All four companies are developing new spacecraft and rocket engines which could carry astronauts to the ISS or beyond in the near future.

“What we have seen from our industry partners is a determination to make their components and systems work reliably, and in turn they’ve been able to demonstrate the complex machinery that makes spaceflight possible will also work as planned. These next few months will continue to raise the bar for achievement by our partners,” said Kathy Lueders, Commercial Crew Program manager. 

Updates on the progress of NASA’s commercial partners are available, on an ongoing basis, at nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew.