What happens when someone hijacks a science instrument

Source: Russia Threatens to Hijack German Space Telescope

Russia’s space agency has announced its intention to unilaterally seize control of a German telescope mounted to a Russian-built spacecraft. It’s a terrible, irresponsible idea, as even Russian scientists will admit.
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Russia is going to switch eROSITA back on without the explicit consent of the Max Planck Institute, as reported in Deutsche Welle. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin, a devout supporter of Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, made his intentions clear during a recent televised interview.

“I gave instructions to start work on restoring the operation of the German telescope in the Spektr-RG system so it works together with the Russian telescope,” Rogozin said. “Despite Germany’s demand to shut down one of the two telescopes at Spektr-RG, Russian specialists insist on continuing its work. Roscosmos will make relevant decisions in the near future.”

To which he added: “They—the people that made the decision to shut down the telescope—don’t have a moral right to halt this research for humankind just because their pro-fascist views are close to our enemies.”
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Russia replicates the Nazi practices that started WW-II and the irony is they are oblivious to understanding of what they are doing. The loss is to empirical science.

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Lev Zeleny, scientific director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, spoke out against the decision to switch eROSITA back on, saying: “Our institute—all scientists—strongly object to this proposal,” as he wasquoted by Russia’s state-run Gazeta. The objection, Zeleny said, “is both for political and technical reasons,” saying it’s not clear if Russian astronomers will actually figure out how to use eROSITA, or if outside journals will go on to publish any scientific results that might come from the move.

The scientific supervisor of the Spektr-RG project, Rashid Sunyaev, is concerned that Russian astronomers might accidentally damage Germany’s telescope, as reported in Interfax, a private Russian media outlet. “This is a wonderful device, absolutely world class, which has already given a lot of data,” Sunyaev said. “We all dream of seeing it return to active work. But it is an amazingly complex device, and if we decide to ignore agreements with partners and turn it on ourselves, it can simply ruin it,” Sunyaev said.
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Bob Wilson