Russia retaliates against US sanctions… UK OneWeb to give up 36 satellite launches
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(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Ui-jin = After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the West responded with sanctions, cracking the space cooperation between the two sides.
Russia’s Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced on the 3rd (local time) that it will not supply rocket engines to the United States.
According to Archyde.com, Dmitry Rogozin, president of Los Cosmos, told the state-run TV channel ‘Rosiya 24’ on the same day, “Under these circumstances, the world’s best-in-class rocket engines cannot be supplied to the United States.”
Archyde.com explained that the supply cut was a retaliatory measure in response to US sanctions against Russia.
President Rogojin said, “Let the US find something (other than a Russian engine) and make it fly. Something like a ‘long broomstick’ (which a witch rides on). I don’t know what it will be like.”
Russia then claimed that Russia has supplied a total of 122 RD-180 rocket engines since the 1990s, of which 98 were used in the US ‘Atlus rocket’.
In fact, the RD-180 engine constitutes the first stage of the Atlus 5(V) rocket, a space launch vehicle manufactured by Boeing and Lockheed Martin of the United States. The United States has been carrying the US Air Force’s top-secret spacecraft, the X-37B, since 2002 through these Atlus 5 rockets.
Rogojin added that the service provided to rocket engines already delivered to the United States will also be suspended.
The US and Russia have built cooperative relations in the space field despite power conflicts for the past several decades, but these relations are rapidly deteriorating in recent years.
Last week, President Rogojin tweeted about the issue of the International Space Station (ISS) operating and hinted at the possibility that space cooperation between Russia and the United States would be halted.
The ISS is considered a symbol of space cooperation between the two countries.
At that time, President Rogojin said, “It will hinder not only the (Russia) aerospace industry, but also their (US) space program” regarding the sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. If it is stopped, who will stop the ISS from getting out of orbit and falling into the United States or Europe?” he warned.
Russia, which has operated the ISS together with the United States since 2000, is responsible for periodically maintaining the ISS’s altitude within 400 km by spraying the engine of the space cargo ship ‘Progress’. Instead, the US is in charge of supplying power to the ISS and operating life support systems, so it is not easy to operate normally without one.
As Russia has previously announced that it will withdraw from the operation of the space station immediately when the operation agreement scheduled for 2024 ends, there is also a prospect that the space cooperation between the two countries may collapse more quickly if such friction continues.
The Russian space agency also had a conflict with the British government on the 1st.
Oneweb, a company partially owned by the British government, decided to launch 36 satellites for its space internet on a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on the night of the 4th.
However, Roscosmos said on the 1st that Britain was hostile to Russia and that it would launch a satellite “only after accepting the requirement not to use the satellite for military purposes.”
In response, OneWeb announced in a statement on the 3rd that it would not accept Russia’s request and that it would suspend the scheduled launch of 36 satellites.
The British government also supported the decision, saying, “In the context of Russia’s illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, the UK will consider whether to continue all projects in cooperation with Russia in the future.”
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