Russian space agency Roscosmos ceases joint experiments on International Space Station
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES Technology
Russian space agency Roscosmos has ceased joint experiments with Germany on the International Space Station."The Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions, the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense," Roscosmos said in the tweet.The massive global backlash to Moscow's invasion a week ago has already affected a range of scientific initiatives, including a planned Russian-European mission to land a rover on Mars. "Offlining the satellites of any country is actually a casus belli, a cause for war," said Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.Western sanctions have cut Russia off from many global initiatives over the last week. NASA is exploring ways to keep the International Space Station, long home to both astronauts and cosmonauts, in orbit without Russian help. But US-Russian ties have frayed since Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimea region from Ukraine, prompting Congress to ban new government contracts with US companies using Russian rocket engineers for national security launches after 2022.After ending its space shuttle program in 2011, the United States began paying Roscosmos to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the space station aboard Soyuz capsules. NASA resumed launching its own crew members from US soil in 2020, even as it continued to hitch some rides on Soyuz. Even before the Ukraine crisis escalated in recent weeks, US-Russian space cooperation was shaken in mid-November when Russia blasted one of its own defunct surveillance satellites in an unannounced missile test that generated a debris field in low-Earth orbit, threatening the space station.