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http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/gener...s/OSS08228.xml

Cosmonaut Photographed South Ossetia From ISS
Aug 22, 2008
By Frank Morring, Jr.

[EXCERPT]

Russia has claimed humanitarian motives in its use of the
International Space Station (ISS) to collect overhead imagery of South
Ossetia shortly after it invaded the breakaway Georgian province.

On Aug. 9 Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera equipped with
an 800mm telephoto lens and a video camera to photograph "after-
effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus," according to
the ISS status report for that day published by NASA on its website.

Use of the space station for military purposes would violate the Jan.
29, 1998, ISS cooperation agreement between NASA and the Russian Space
Agency, which makes repeated references to the civil nature of the
orbiting facility.

"The Space Station together with its additions of evolutionary
capability will remain a civil station, and its operation and
utilization will be for peaceful purposes, in accordance with
international law," reads Article 14 of the agreement.

Apparently with that language in mind, Russia's space agency Roscosmos
informed the U.S. space agency that Kononenko's actions two days after
Russian forces moved into South Ossetia were not military in nature.

"Roscosmos informed us that the pictures were requested to support
potential humanitarian activities in the area, including serious water
resource management issues," said a spokesman for NASA's Office of
External Relations, who added that NASA was not pursuing the matter.

Kononenko's photography was conducted as part of the long-running
Russian "Uragan" (hurricane) Earth-imaging program on the ISS,
according to the NASA status report. On Aug. 9, in addition to the war
zone, the civilian cosmonaut photographed glaciers on the north slope
of the Caucasus, the Kalmyk steppe, the Volga River from Astrakhan to
the Caspian Sea, and other surface features as the space station moved
eastward.