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Remember Deep Impact — that global disaster movie from the 1990’s when the world’s finest astronauts embarked on a suicide mission to save mankind from a comet heading straight for Earth? Now, imagine if the producers introduced a new twist to the plot: besides the comet, NASA is pitted against a Russian astrologist who sues the space agency because destroying a comet would irrevocably harm her “system of spiritual values”.Well, we’re not in the direct trajectory of a comet (not yet anyway), but a Deep Impact mission is underway, with a NASA spacecraft loaded with explosives scheduled to collide with the Tempel-1 comet on July 4 and blast it to smithereens. That’s right, it’s Independence Day.
Now, the last thing NASA expected was a lawsuit from Russia.
But Russian astrologist Marina Bai gave it a try, and, according to her lawyer Alexander Molokhov, it looks like she may just pull it off. In a lawsuit she filed last month with the Presnensky district court in Moscow, Bai is demanding that NASA call off its $311 million operation, with the spacecraft already in its cruise phase. She also wants 8.7 billion rubles (the ruble equivalent of the entire cost of the mission) in compensation for moral damages.
“The actions of NASA infringe upon my system of spiritual and life values, in particular on the values of every element of creation, upon the unacceptability of barbarically interfering with the natural life of the universe, and the violation of the natural balance of the Universe,” Bai said in her claim.