The head of Russia’s space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, made a bizarre and wildly inaccurate statement last Thursday.
“If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from uncontrolled deorbiting and falling into the United States,” Rogozin said on Twitter.
“There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China,” he said. “Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?”
The warning comes with a faux pas by the director of the Russian space agency. The ISS does indeed pass over Russia as well as other adjacent countries.
Olegovich’s wild Twitter post came after sanctions against Russia were proposed by President Biden, with other countries supporting the move.
The ISS is going to crash to Earth in the coming years and NASA plans the decommissioning of the ISS for 2030.
Rogozin, a Russian politician, threatened that the end might come at the hand of the Russians.
Typically, the agency uses a controlled burn to ensure that the debris falls harmlessly into the ocean.
The ISS relies on technology and cooperation provided by the Russians to control the propulsion systems designed to keep the space station in orbit. Without a periodic impulse to maintain trajectory, the station’s orbit would decay, leading to a slow fall into and through the Earth’s atmosphere.
“If the Russians walk away, then you’ve got this massive object that’s going to come back in randomly somewhere over the Earth,” Wayne Hale, former program manager of NASA’s Space Shuttle and a member of NASA’s Advisory Council, as reported by The Verge.
Jim DeLillo writes about tech, science, and travel. He is also an adventure photographer specializing in transporting imagery and descriptive narrative. He lives in Cedarburg, WI with his wife, Judy. In addition to his work for MetaStellar, he also writes a weekly article for Telescope Live.