Russia admitted on Tuesday to having destroyed its own satellite during the test of a space missile, although it denied having endangered the crew of the International Space Station and called the accusation of the United States “hypocritical” in this regard.
“The Russian Defense Ministry has successfully carried out a test, as a result of which the” Tselina-D “spacecraft, which has been in orbit since 1982, was destroyed,” the Russian military said in a statement.
The launch of this missile had been advanced the day before from the United States, which accused Moscow of causing a cloud of debris threatening the astronauts of the International Space Station (ISS).
According to Washington, the seven astronauts aboard the ISS had to temporarily take refuge in their ships to prepare for an eventual emergency evacuation.
However, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, dismissed as “hypocritical” the accusations of the United States that, along with China and India, were the only countries to have launched space missiles so far.
To declare that the Russian Federation created risks to the civilian exploitation of space is hypocritical to say the least. There is no fact in this regard, “Lavrov said.
The Russian diplomatic chief also indicated that the United States “ignored Russian and Chinese proposals for an international agreement to prevent an arms race in space “and added that in 2020” they created a space command and adopted a strategy, one of whose objectives was to establish a military dominance in the cosmos. “
The discord highlights the risk of a militarization of space, one of the few fields where Washington and Moscow still maintain a relatively stable cooperation despite their many discrepancies.
On the eve, the head of NASA Bill Nelson said “indignant” and the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, stressed that the debris cloud would threaten space activities “for decades.”
On Tuesday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos replied that its “top priority” was the “safety of the crew” of the ISS.
Only the joint efforts of all space powers will be able to ensure the safest possible coexistence and operations in the space realm, “Roscosmos said in a statement.
According to the Russian public press agency TASS, NASA officials will talk with the director of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin, in the morning.
Militarization of space
The incident rekindled fears of seeing space transformed into a battlefield between great powers, eager to experiment with new military technologies.
Until now, Moscow had raised its voice against any attempt to militarize space, where only the United States, China and India had conducted anti-satellite missile tests.
However, Russian military expert Pavel Felgenhauer stressed to AFP that Moscow had never hidden that it had systems capable of reaching space from Earth.
These include the defense systems S-500 and S-550capable, according to the army, of reducing satellites to rubble, he says.
“Russia has always said that it was against the deployment of weapons in space, but not that it was against the use of weapons in space,” says the expert from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, noting that there is no “formal” ban on this. type of weapons in international law.
Monday’s alleged launch may have generated a huge amount of debris that poses a risk to thousands of other orbiting satellites on which many activities such as communications or geolocation depend.
Destroying satellites of other countries or deploying offensives in space can offer a strategic military advantage, but the development of these capabilities can unleash an arms race with unpredictable consequences.
Despite their usual cooperation, diplomatic dynamics on Earth have also peppered Russian-American cooperation in space.
An example is the commitment of Moscow and Beijing to deepen their aerospace cooperation against Western powers.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx