American Military News by Noah Bierman - Los Angeles Times April 17, 2022
A 57-second video posted by the Russian government last month caught the attention of scientists and diplomats, but not in a way that inspired optimism about the future of global cooperation in outer space.
In it, Russian cosmonauts floated about the International Space Station, hugging and waving goodbye to an American astronaut. Then they entered their portion of the complex and sealed airlock doors behind them. With the video blasting a Russian song, “Farewell,” CGI took over and depicted the cosmonaut’s segment detaching from the station and drifting away (to the applause of Russian ground controllers).
The dark yet jaunty satirical video, depicting what would be the certain demise of the station, presaged more serious threats to an endeavor that has come to symbolize post-Cold War cooperation in space.
It is also a further sign that friction with the Kremlin, most recently aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has seeped into space, exacerbating tensions over the rules of behavior there and halting negotiations over space weapons at a time when the battlegrounds of war are moving to the edges of Earth’s atmosphere.
“The whole world is sort of readjusting to this whole notion of not just competition, but possible and even unintentional confrontation with other big powers” over how they use space, said Jessica West, a senior researcher with Project Ploughshares, a peace research group based in Canada.
Space has long been a barometer of the U.S.-Russia relationship. Cold War competition pushed Moscow and Washington toward new human feats in the 1960s, including the U.S. moon landing in 1969. Anxiety over President Reagan’s “Star Wars” defensive weapons program drove arms negotiations in the 1980s that presaged the end of the Soviet Union.
The 1998 space station agreement — which also includes the European Union, Japan and Canada — signaled a new era of shared advancement in the post-Cold War period. For more than two decades, the jointly operated station has been spinning around Earth.
That space détente was waning long before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, and the U.S. and its allies targeted Moscow’s space industry in a raft of economic sanctions. For two decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed for an aggressive expansion of his country’s space weapons program.
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/04/russias-ukraine-invasion-has-escalated-a-brewing-battle-over-space/
