Space and Physics
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Roscomos Director Dmitry Rogozin continues to threaten to pull Russia from the International Space Station (ISS). This latest tweet is a subtle reminder of his first threat – that without Russia, the remaining international partners will have to find a way to correct the orbit of the ISS to keep it in space.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.The threat, shared on Twitter, states that Roscomos has sent written appeals to NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency to lift “illegal” sanctions that have followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The tweet is accompanied by a map that shows the parts of Russia that are flown over by the ISS.
In his original threat, Rogozin claimed that without Russia, the ISS will come down in an uncontrolled re-entry that might threaten the US, Europe, China, and India, but not Russia.
The new map shows that an uncontrolled re-entry would have a chance to hit Russia as well, and almost every country on the planet.
Several former astronauts have been calling out Rogozin's “burning bridges" approach, stopping Russian scientific collaboration approaches in space, holding British satellites it was supposed to launch until Roscomsos' demands are met, and even providing footage for a video shared by Russian TV news that showed the ISS being dismantled. That video showed astronaut Mark Vande Hei – who’s coming back to Earth at the end of the month with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov – stranded there.
If Russia pulls out of the ISS, there are ways to keep the Station in orbit, no matter what Rogizin might claim.
