After boldly announcing his intention to retire, NASA and end its involvement with the International Space Station by 2024, officials from Roscosmos, the Russian space agency has been forced to roll back their threat. They informed NASA yesterday that Moscow plans to fly its cosmonauts in the orbital laboratory into their own cosmonauts. room outpost is built and operational.
Based on comments made yesterday by senior Russian space officials, this suggests that Russia will not leave the ISS before 2028, delaying their departure by at least four years.
Earlier this week, director general of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov noted that Russia would abandon its partnership with NASA aboard the ISS after fulfilling all its obligations to its partners.
The new space chief, who recently replaced Dmitry Rogozin, said Moscow will have started forming Russia’s Orbital Space Station (ROSS) by 2024.
Shortly after this announcement, Kathy Lueders, NASA’s chief of space operations, said Russian officials told the US space agency that Roscosmos wanted to remain in the partnership while Russia works to get ROSS up and running.
She said: “We are not getting any indication at any work level that anything has changed,” adding that NASA’s relations with Roscosmos remain “business as usual.”
This is because Roscosmos published an interview yesterday with Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director for the Russian segment of the ISS.
In the interview, he said that Russia must remain on the ISS until the ROSS is operational, which is likely to be fully mounted in orbit sometime in 2028.
Mr Solovyov said: “Of course we should continue to operate the ISS until we create a more or less tangible backlog for ROSS.
READ MORE: Russia stirs up ISS horror as NASA warning of ‘early demise’
“We have to keep in mind that if we stop manned flights for several years, it will be very difficult to restore what has been achieved.”
While NASA and other partners such as the ESA plan to operate the orbital station until 2031, Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor of Strategy and Security Studies at Air University, warned that Russia’s withdrawal from the ISS could cause the “early demise of the orbital laboratory.” mean.
She said: “While it remains unclear whether the Russians will push through with this announcement, it adds significant tension to the conduct of the most successful international cooperation in space ever.”
Russian-made modules are a critical part of the 400-ton space station, as Roscosmos serves six of the ISS’s 17 modules, including Zvezda, which houses the main engine system.
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