JAKARTA - Russian space agency Roscosmos has postponed testing of its rocket engine because almost all of the liquid oxygen it produces is being sent to Covid-19 patients affected by the third wave of the pandemic.
It was reported by Roscosmos CEO, Dmitry Rogozin, who wrote on Twitter on Sunday 29 August that the state-owned space agency wanted to help contain the pandemic at any cost".
"We have transferred almost all of the oxygen produced by our company to medical institutions for three months now, forcing us to postpone testing of rocket engines," he explained.
Last week, Russia broke the daily Covid-19 death record, recording 820 within 24 hours. According to official statistics, nearly seven million Russians have contracted the coronavirus, with 181,637 of them dead.
A similar situation exists in the US, where demand for liquid oxygen has caused NASA to delay the launch of Earth reconnaissance satellites, as reported by Bloomberg.
The spike in cases, particularly in the state of Florida, where NASA's spaceport is located, means that the American space agency has also shifted resources to hospitals.
On Thursday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that lack of fuel availability was a "risk" but "not yet a limiting factor."
Oxygen turns into a liquid at freezing temperatures. It was first used as a propellant by American engineer Robert Goddard, who launched the first liquid-fuel rocket powered by oxygen and gasoline in 1926.
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