NASA AstronautMOSCOW, Mar 17 NASA has asked retired astronaut Scott Kelly and his colleagues to choose their language when interacting with Russian officials, CNN reports, citing a letter.
"As Americans, you have every right to speak personal opinion <…> however, please remember that your statements as former NASA astronauts carry additional weight and attacks on our Russian partners are detrimental to the activities of the current mission" operations in Ukraine, Kelly began to write barbs on the page of the head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, but after a request from the leadership, he promised to stop doing this. Western countries responded to the Russian special operation with another round of sanctions — in particular, restrictions on the export of high-tech products affected the space industry. Russia, for its part, refused to launch satellites of the British company OneWeb from Baikonur, and also froze the supply of RD-180 and RD-181 rocket engines to the United States. In addition, Rogozin announced the suspension of cooperation with European partners in launches from the Kourou cosmodrome. All Russian personnel were recalled from French Guiana. Nevertheless, according to Rogozin, Roskosmos would like to keep the ExoMars-2022 mission, which is scheduled to launch in September. plans to create a military-applied orbital station