War in Ukraine | Conflict echoes in space

A German telescope installed on a Russian satellite is coveted. The big boss of the Russian space agency has, in fact, threatened to take control of the instrument, put on standby for three months, because of the invasion of Ukraine. A first in space law.

Mathieu Perreault
The Press

The threat

“I gave the instruction to restore the operation of the German telescope in the Spektr-RG satellite,” said the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. “The people who decided to turn off the telescope have no moral right to stop this important research for humanity, because their pro-fascist vision is close to that of our enemies. »

This belligerent statement made on Russian television, and reported by German radio Deutsche Welle, was mitigated by the lack of collaboration from the Russian Academy of Sciences. One of its officials told the Russian agency Gazeta that relaunching the German eROSITA telescope was not desirable. Mr. Rogozin countered that Roscosmos technicians were ready to do the job without the collaboration of Russian astrophysicists.

Destruction

The eROSITA telescope “may be destroyed” if it is revived without the collaboration of German researchers, the The Press Peter Predehl of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who is the chief scientist of the German instrument. The Russian Academy of Sciences had the same concern, in addition to the fear that scientific results obtained without German collaboration would not be accepted by academic publications.

Does Germany have legal recourse against Russia? “It all depends on the contract,” says Kuan-Wei Chen, director of McGill University’s Center for Air and Space Research. “This is truly an unprecedented case. According to space law, the interests of other countries must be taken into account. So Russia, normally, would have to compensate Germany if it damaged a German instrument. »

A politician in charge

Veteran of the war in Transnistria, leader of a far-right party, ambassador to NATO, author of a book on the “betrayal” of the sale of Alaska… Nothing destined Dmitry Rogozin to become the great head of the Russian space program, a position he has held since 2011. “He’s more of a politician than an administrator or a scientist,” says Mr. Chen.

Among other threats, Mr. Rogozin has declared several times since February that Russia could withdraw from the management of the International Space Station, which would condemn it to an untimely death. His vis-à-vis are not left out: in March, the former American astronaut Scott Kelly declared on Twitter that without the income from transporting Western astronauts on Soyuz, Roscosmos would be worth nothing. “Perhaps you could find yourself a job at McDonald’s if McDonald’s still existed in Russia,” Kelly said.

Galactic embryos and black holes

Launched in 2019, the German X-ray telescope eROSITA aims to discover 100,000 stellar clusters, 700,000 stars and 3 million galaxy embryos within seven years.

In 2020, the eROSITA team released an image revealing never-before-seen features of the Milky Way: mushroom-like bubbles of gas and intergalactic gas flows toward the center of our galaxy. Last summer, the discovery of 3 million black holes was announced.

Other missions on the ice

The most significant impact of the freezing of space relations between Russia and the West is the postponement of the launch of the Rosalind Franklin space mission, which includes a Russian lander. The launch was scheduled for the fall. Roscosmos has also suspended its contract to launch Soyuz cargo ships to the International Space Station (from Ariane rockets in French Guiana), and suspended support for Russian RD rocket engines, used by launchers from American firms United Launch Alliance (ULA ) and Northrop Grumman. The latter uses it for its freighter Cygnus, which also serves the Space Station. Finally, the British satellite internet firm OneWeb, which was to launch dozens of satellites this year from the Baikonur spaceport, from Russian launchers, decided to find another way to get into orbit.

Canada’s precedent

In 1978, the Soviet military satellite Kosmos 954 crashed in the Northwest Territories. Its radioactive fuel leaked into the environment, necessitating an extensive clean-up operation. Canada sued the USSR to recover these decontamination costs, eventually obtaining CAD 3 million, half of the sum claimed. “So far, this is the only instance of a space-related interstate pursuit,” Chen said.