Still, I.S.S. has landed at a clumsy time for the precise ISS. Russia and the US are removed from a nuclear battle, however they’re on reverse sides of a brutal war in Ukraine that’s gone on for almost two years and resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties. While the Russian and American house packages, Roscosmos and NASA, have managed to maintain operations aboard the ISS going—scientists from each international locations have traveled to and from the station on Soyuz and SpaceX spacecraft—the ISS’s distinctive scenario hasn’t gone unnoticed.

In truth, the station has become one thing of a political bargaining chip. During the 2014 invasion of Crimea, the then-head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, responded to US sanctions by suggesting that US astronauts begin touring to the ISS by way of “trampoline” (at that time, NASA was depending on Russia’s Soyuz). After the onset of the broader Ukraine conflict, Rogozin steered that, with out Russia’s assist, the ISS might have an uncontrolled deorbit. Recent Russian anti-satellite missile testing—which generally entails taking pictures down outdated satellites from Earth—has additionally created space debris that has endangered astronauts and compelled them to shelter, according to US officials.

“There are clear allusions [in the movie] to the conflicts that are happening today between the United States and Russia over Ukraine … and thinking about how the astronauts and cosmonauts are getting along up on the space station now,” says Wendy Whitman Cobb, a political scientist on the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies who research public notion of house.

Could the ISS actually grow to be a centerpiece of worldwide world conflict? A direct nuclear battle breaking out between the US and Russia appears unlikely proper now. But even in that devastating state of affairs, house coverage consultants say the house station is designed in order that Russia and the US are depending on one another. The ISS can’t work with out each international locations’ participation, making the predicament sketched out in I.S.S. inconceivable. For its half, NASA, when requested concerning the film, pointed to the historic success of the station, which, as of November, has been internet hosting people for 23 years.

“Through this global endeavor, 276 people from 22 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 3,000 research and educational investigations from people in 108 countries and areas,” Joshua Finch, a spokesperson for the house company, instructed WIRED. “NASA continues to maintain a professional relationship with its space agency counterparts to ensure the safety of the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station and ongoing safe operations.”

It’s not clear the ISS would matter that a lot to anybody amid such an immense disaster, particularly for the reason that station is a base for civilian science analysis. In the movie, it’s steered that the ISS is likely to be storing a remedy to radiation illness that might be useful within the aftermath of a nuclear conflict. But I.S.S., house coverage knowledgeable Namrata Goswami says, did “a poor job of explaining why, when the US and Russia are nuking each other, anyone from Earth would bother to send a message to their respective teams on the ISS, to take control of it, by any means possible.”