Business 3 March 2022, 2:47pm

Russia imposes sanctions on US, Germany

Portfolio

Roscosmos, Russia's Space Agency, has halted the supply of rocket engines to the United States, and Russian-German cooperation on the International Space Station has also been stopped.

In response to the sanctions imposed on Russia, the country is freezing its rocket engine exports to the United States, Dmitry Rogozin, CEO of the state space company Roscosmos, announced on Thursday on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

Rogozin said that the servicing of engines already delivered overseas would also be stopped.

In addition, Russia will stop its cooperation with Germany on the Russian segment of the International Space Station and will continue its activities independently.

Launch of UK's OneWeb satellites held hostage

Roscosmos will not launch three dozen OneWeb internet satellites as planned on Friday (March 4) unless the company meets new demands, the Russian space agency announced on Wednesday, space.com reported.

Wednesday morning, Roscosmos rolled a Soyuz rocket out to the launch pad at the Russia-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying 36 satellites for the London-based company OneWeb. Shortly after the rollout, Roscosmos Director-General Dmitry Rogozin made an online statement that the agency will not launch the satellites as planned if the company does not guarantee that the craft will not be used for military purposes.

And Roscosmos further demanded that the United Kingdom government remove its investment in the company as another condition for launch. (The UK government helped buy OneWeb out of bankruptcy in late 2020.)

If these demands are not met by 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT; 9:30 p.m. local time in Moscow) on Friday, Roscosmos will remove the Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying the satellites from the launch pad.

A Friday launch is highly questionable at this point, for the demands are unlikely to be met.

"There's no negotiation on OneWeb: the UK Government is not selling its share. We are in touch with other shareholders to discuss next steps," UK Member of Parliament Kwasi Kwarteng, who serves as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said via Twitter yesterday.

Roscosmos has been cutting ties with some of its long-time partners, citing the sanctions as rationale. For example, Roscosmos announced on Feb. 26 that it will no longer collaborate with the European Space Agency at the European spaceport in French Guiana, on the north coast of South America.

Cover photo: Getty Images