The Russian Invasion Touches Outer Space
This week, as Russia unleashed a violent assault on Ukraine, the director of Russia’s space agency went on a rant. 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.”
At first glance, the statement seems, well, pretty unhinged. Particularly because Russia is one of the nations that operates the ISS, and has two of its own cosmonauts on board. (And, although the station’s orbital path falls mostly outside of Russia, the ISS does pass over a small part of its southern border.)
