Russia-Ukraine war latest news: The West imposed a new round of sweeping sanctions against Russia after it launched an all-out military operation against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, warned on Twitter the sanctions imposed against Russia could have serious implications in space.
In a series of tweets, Rogozin claimed the International Space Station (ISS) could fall out of orbit and crash somewhere into Earth because of the sanctions against Russia.
"If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe. There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect?" he said.
The head of Russia's space agency further said, ISS, doesn't fly over Russia so it's not a concern of hitting their country.
The space station, an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, including Canada, several countries in Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States, launched in 1998 and morphed into a complex that's almost as long as a football field, with eight miles of electrical wiring, an acre of solar panels and three high-tech labs. It marked two decades of people continuously living and working in orbit in 2020. The first crew – American Bill Shepherd and Russians Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko – blasted off from Kazakhstan on Oct. 31, 2000. Two days later, they swung open the space station doors, and clasped their hands in unity. Russia kept station crews coming and going after NASA's Columbia disaster in 2003 and after the space shuttles retired in 2011.
Earlier this year, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who chaired a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, said he was keen to discuss ways to prevent dangerous military incidents or accidents involving Russia and the Western allies, reducing space and cyber threats, as well as setting limits on missile deployments and other arms control initiatives.
Lawmakers have specifically exempted space cooperation from previous sanctions and can be expected to make similar arguments against targeting it as the administration considers its next steps over Ukraine.
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