3/20/2023 0 Comments Russian space shuttleRead: How far will Biden go to stop Putin? eventually asked Russia to join its efforts alongside the European and Japanese space agencies to build a brand-new space station, and together they started assembling the ISS piece by piece in orbit in 1998. Astronauts and cosmonauts continued to meet in space in the 1990s, taking turns spending time in the American space shuttles and Mir, the Russian space station. In the summer of 1975, an Apollo module and a Soyuz capsule docked together in orbit, the first international astronaut mission in history and a show of détente between the superpowers. But several international space missions this year currently rely on Russian partnership, and both American and European officials will have to reexamine those efforts and decide whether they’ve reached that point.Īmericans and Russians have worked together in space since the 1970s, not long after the United States landed men on the moon and its space race with the Soviet Union drew to a close. In some ways, NASA has already been disentangling itself from its ties to Russia. And surely for some spacefaring nations, there must come a point when compartmentalization doesn’t seem like the simple solution it once was. The idea that earthly matters can’t touch something as lofty as space travel is only a platitude, not a certainty. Considering how Biden and other leaders are describing their current diplomatic relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it is unclear how long space agencies such as NASA and the European Space Agency, which includes 22 nations, can keep their working relationships with Russia untarnished by the fallout. What happens next, beyond this moment of déjà vu, is less certain. ban on technology exports to Russia wouldn’t extend to ISS operations.) (Rogozin appeared to calm down after NASA said Thursday night that a new U.S. And then, as now, there were assurances from NASA that the two nations’ work on the ISS would be just fine. sanctions for his role in the invasion of the Crimean peninsula. Then, as now, there were inflammatory comments thrown around from figures like Rogozin, who is himself under U.S. and other countries issued punitive measures against Russia for its takeover of Crimea, questions about the welfare of the ISS effort came up. Our efforts in space are, no pun intended, above all that. Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraineįor decades, officials in both countries have stuck to the same lines about the value of collaboration in space: Past conflicts and competitions aside, projects such as the ISS are bastions of international cooperation, an emblem of our better selves, especially during times of crisis. The agency said in a statement: “NASA continues working with all our international partners”-including Roscosmos, the Russian space agency-“for the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station.” Rogozin’s American counterpart, the NASA administrator Bill Nelson, did not respond directly. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Rogozin was referring to the fact that the space station currently relies on Russian propulsion systems to maintain its altitude in orbit, and was apparently threatening to withdraw those services if sanctions affected the ISS-and doing it in the most thuggish way possible. Russia can’t press a button and drop it out of its orbit 260 miles above Earth. (And, although the station’s orbital path falls mostly outside of Russia, the ISS does pass over a small part of its southern border.)īefore the specter of a space station crashing in middle America starts to seem too real, let me reassure you: The International Space Station is not about to come down. Particularly because Russia is one of the nations that operates the ISS, and has two of its own cosmonauts on board. After President Joe Biden announced on Thursday new sanctions against Russia that would, among other effects, “degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program,” Dmitry Rogozin responded with a series of tweets about the International Space Station: “Do you want to destroy our cooperation on the ISS? If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and a fall on the United States or Europe? … The ISS doesn’t fly over Russia, so the risks are all yours.”Īt first glance, the statement seems, well, pretty unhinged. This week, as Russia unleashed a violent assault on Ukraine, the director of Russia’s space agency went on a rant.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |