Russia-Ukraine war: Could Roscosmos withdraw from cooperation with ISS? Read to know

Unhappy with the sanctions imposed by the US and European Union, Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of the Russian space agency Roscosmos had warned that it could destroy cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS). US President Joe Biden had said, on February 25, that the additional sanctions on Russia, for its invasion in Ukraine, "will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program". The announcement was not well received by the Roscosmos chief, who implied that Russia's degradation of space program could even cause the ISS to crash into Earth.

"If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or Europe? There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. 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?", Rogozin wrote in his tweet.

Could Roscosmos' pull out from the ISS lead to a crash?

To understand how Roscosmos in keeping the ISS from crashing into Earth, we first have to understand how the ISS maintains its orbit. Being the size of an American football field, the ISS is installed at an altitude of approximately 400 kilometres and circles our planet at 27,580 km/h, which accounts for 16 trips around the Earth in a day. During its rotation, the laboratory maintains itself in orbit by pushing away and balancing the Earth's gravity to avoid falling into it. However, with each trip, the ISS experiences atmospheric drag and minutely slows down, which results in orbital decay and makes it approach re-entry.

This is when Russia comes into play. The ISS has Roscosmos' Progress MS-19 cargo ship docked, which performs booster manoeuvres to keep the observatory intact in its orbit. With his threatening tweets, Rogozin meant that an absence of its cargo ship would strip the ISS of the booster manoeuvres, causing it to lose orbit and crash onto Earth.

However, it is pertinent to mention here that Russia's non-cooperation alone would not necessarily lead to a crash as there are several other modules on the ISS that can keep it in orbit. The astronauts can also use SpaceX spacecraft from keeping the 500-ton structure alive. Currently, there are seven astronauts aboard the space station out of which two are Russians, four are Americans with one European astronaut. 

Image: NASA/AP