Roscosmos has reported that the OneWeb satellites, which are set to launch this Friday, are being held, hostage. The head of the Russian Space Agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has said that OneWeb has to ensure that the satellites won’t be used for military reasons and that the British Government, the principal investor in the satellite internet firm, needs to withdraw from it. This is just one of the numerous escalations from Roscosmos and Rogozin in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the previous several days. While NASA maintained that international collaboration in space was “business as usual,” Rogozin threatened to withdraw Russia from the International Space Station (ISS), claiming that this would result in the ISS’s inability to stay in orbit.
Roscosmos also relocated its employees and equipment from the European Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana. The Rosalind Franklin rover’s launch to Mars is likely to be delayed due to the deteriorating crisis. OneWeb is building a network of low-Earth-orbit satellites to bring the internet via space. It has launched 428 satellites so far, in groups of 34 or 36. All of them were launched on Soyuz rockets.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NASA has stated that the International Space Station (ISS) would continue to operate normally, collaborating with other international partners as well as Russia. Despite the promise of peace and collaboration that the ISS is meant to embody, space research remains an armed realm. According to The Independent, “the International Space Station team is continuing to safely undertake scientific activities in low-Earth orbit.”
“Ongoing station activities include efforts to fly astronauts to the orbiting outpost and safely return them to Earth,” says the statement. Josef Aschbacher, the head of the European Space Agency, made an equally impartial remark on the situation. Following the publishing of NASA’s statement, the tone on the other side has shifted dramatically. Following US President Joe Biden’s sanctions against Russia, Roscomos Director Dmitry Rogozin took to Twitter to threaten that Russia will leave the joint venture. Without Russia, he believes the ISS would fall to Europe, the United States, or possibly India and China.
The Russian section of the station is in charge of keeping the station in the proper orbit. It may be conceivable to do so without Russia, but this has not been considered. Rogozin referenced Q-conspiracy anon’s theories about Trump in his tweets, and he appeared to take a jab at Musk’s satellite mega constellations, which have alarmed astronomers and space authorities. “The engines of the Russian Progress MS cargo ships generate entirely the correction of the station’s orbit, its avoidance of deadly encounters with space junk, with which your bright businesspeople have fouled the near-Earth orbit,” he tweeted.
