Elon Musk said SpaceX is ready to keep operations on the International Space Station - only days after the director of Russia's space agency strangely suggested the ISS would crash to Earth as a result of international sanctions against the Kremlin.
Musk was reacting to comments made by Roscosmos Director-General Dmitry Rogozin on Twitter last week after the Biden administration issued a wave of sanctions on Russia's space industry.
Rogozin suggested in a series of tweets that if Russia pulled out of the collaborative endeavor, the ISS would plunge from orbit.
"If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled de-orbit and fall into the United States or Europe?" Rogozin tweeted in Russian, according to a translation. "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."
Musk responded to Rogozin's post with an image of the SpaceX logo - and subsequently affirmed his company would step in to assist if Russia withdrew its support in a way that jeopardized the space station.
In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Europe imposed harsh sanctions. Following the announcement of these sanctions by Europe, Roscosmos said on February 26 that it would end its collaboration with Europe, which allows Soyuz launches from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana. According to SpaceNews, Roscosmos has also announced that its employees will be leaving the European spaceport.
NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 as part of its commercial crew program to create crew capsules that could transport humans to and from the International Space Station. While Boeing's Starliner has yet to transport a crew, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has successfully transported multiple astronaut crews to and from the orbiting lab.
NASA formed this agreement with the stated goal of reducing the agency's reliance on Russia's Soyuz capsule, which was the agency's only transportation to the station after the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has now appeared to demonstrate his support for Ukraine by stating that the Starlink service is already operational in the country and that "more terminals [are] en route," he wrote on Twitter.
While Rogozin's remarks emphasized that the space station's fate was exclusively dependent on Russia's Soyuz capsules propelling the station into orbit, any spacecraft with extra fuel can do so. Even if there are no Soyuz capsules at the station, Musk's remark strongly suggests that SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft could perform the job just as well.
