Space on targeting: The director of the Russian space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, posted over the weekend a rather bizarre series of tweets, which included, among other things, a direct attack on US President Joe Biden and a threat to the International Space Station, and in fact – a significant portion of the world population. As mentioned, the two countries are cooperating in space, with for several years Russia being the only way for Americans to succeed and launch astronauts into space, since the last American shuttle “retired” about a decade ago. In addition, they also co-finance and maintain the station, which houses astronauts from both countries.
“Do you want to destroy space cooperation,” Rogozin tweeted in response to the U.S. sanctions Biden announced last week. He argued that this was likely to hurt the United States more than Russia. He later tweeted that the International Space Station relies on Russian equipment to stay on track and avoid colliding with space debris, a factually correct thing. In doing so, he hinted in some way about Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, which has launched thousands of satellites in recent years.
garbage, with which your talented businessmen have polluted the near-Earth orbit, is produced exclusively by the engines of the Russian Progress MS cargo ships. If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or…
— ROGOZIN (@Rogozin) February 24, 2022
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Russian aid is so important in this case that without it – the station could eventually deviate from its trajectory and crash into a random location on Earth. However, various experts have noted that the alarming scenario is not expected to happen immediately, but after a certain number of years, so NASA has time to find another solution to the issue.
He went on to tweet: “If you block the cooperation with us – who will save the station from deviating from its path in an uncontrolled route, and falling on Europe or the United States. There is another possibility, according to which it will fall on India or China. Do you want to threaten them with this scenario?” . Rogozin further stressed that the station does not currently pass over Russia, so “the risk is yours alone (facing the United States), so are you ready to deal with it?”.
The director of the agency also implicitly attacked the US president, writing: “Gentlemen, when you are planning sanctions, check if anyone who does this does not have Alzheimer’s. Just in case. To prevent the sanctions from falling on your head. Literally. “
NASA responded: “We continue to work with Roscosmos and our other international partners in Canada, Europe and Japan to maintain safe and sustained operations. No changes are planned for the Agency’s support for the ongoing lapses and ground stations. The new export restrictions will continue to allow for civilian cooperation between the US and Russia.