Western sanctions against Russia could bring down the International Space Station (ISS), Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said on Saturday.
According to him, the operation of Russian rockets that supply the ISS will be hampered by the sanctions, which will have an impact on the Russian segment of the station, which is mainly used to correct orbit. Therefore, this could cause the “splashdown or landing of the ISS, which weighs 500 tons”.
“The Russian segment notes that the station’s orbit is corrected (on average eleven times a year), also to avoid space debris,” explained Rogozin, who often shows his support for the Russian army on social media.
Posting a map of the world, the head of Roscosmos said that if the ISS went down, Russia would be protected.
“But the populations of other countries, especially those led by the ‘dogs of war’ (Western countries, ndlr) must think about the price of sanctions against Roscosmos,” he wrote, calling those who imposed these punitive measures “crazy”.​
On March 1, NASA indicated that it was working to find solutions to keep the station in orbit without Russian help.
Crews and supplies are transported in this segment by Soyuz rockets and Progress ships for transporting food and goods, both Russian.
Rogozin explained that the launcher needed for these rockets to reach their point is affected “by US sanctions since 2021 and European Union (EU) and Canadian sanctions since 2022”.
Roscosmos claims it has appealed to its American (NASA), Canadian (ASC) and European (ESA) partners “demanding an end to illegal sanctions against our companies”.
Space is one of the most recent fields of cooperation between Russia and the United States.
In early March, Roscosmos announced its intention to prioritize the construction of military satellites, given Russia’s increasing isolation from the conflict.
Rogozin also announced that Russia would no longer supply the United States with engines for its Atlas and Antares rockets.
“Send them into space on their brooms,” he said.
On March 30, astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pïotr Dubrov will return to Earth from the ISS on a Soyuz rocket.
