“There are a lot of side effects right now” of the war in Ukraine on the conquest of space and the situation on board the International Space Station, estimates Stefan Barensky, editor-in-chief of the magazine Aerospium, Friday afternoon March 4 on franceinfo.
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franceinfo: What is the impact of the war in Ukraine on the conquest of space? The Russian Space Agency has already suspended its rocket launches from the French base of Kourou in Guyana…
Stefan Barensky: There are a lot of side effects right now. The Russian Space Agency is threatening to withdraw from the International Space Station, but it can’t be done overnight. There is a very strong interdependence between the Russian part and the American-Japanese-European part of the station, which means that one part cannot function without the other. There was a lot of cooperation in the 1990s, mainly to save Russian space and to avoid a brain drain to Iran or North Korea. It is interesting to see that the Russian space industry would have a hard time surviving without all the subsidies, all the currencies that it recovers via these cooperations. In practice, when he withdraws from his programs, he shoots himself in the foot.
How is it on board the ISS?
This is a question I have been asking myself for several days. I have no information because obviously, no one communicates on the issue. Everyone on Earth is looking at their plan B, their options. On board the station, there are certainly different nationalities but they are above all crews, people who know each other, who have worked together for years, and generally even friends. I think that on board, everyone is doing their job because the schedule is quite busy with all the experiments to be done. I imagine there is some consternation.
They do not address the subject in your opinion?
They are still in contact with the ground, you can imagine that at this moment there are things not to say when you are in contact with officials of the Russian Space Agency on the ground. And there, the situation becomes interesting because, in a few weeks, a Soyuz must return to Kazakhstan with on board two Russians and an American. The question is is the American going to be on this return flight, or are we considering another way to bring him back to Earth?