West News Wire: Yury Borisov, the new head of the country’s space agency Roscosmos, announced on Tuesday that Russia will stop working on the International Space Station (ISS) project with the West after 2024.
While Borisov informed President Vladimir Putin during a meeting at the Kremlin that Moscow plans to fulfill all of its duties to foreign partners as part of the ISS project, “the decision to withdraw from this station after 2024 has been made.”
The space administrator continued, “I expect by that point, we’ll start assembling a Russian orbiting station.”
In Borisov’s view, Russia’s human space missions ought to be a component of an organized scientific program, so that each mission would give the nation new information.
The previous head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, had predicted that the ISS, which NASA plans to operate until 2030, would “fall apart” by that time unless “huge amounts of money” are invested in its repair.
But efforts to keep the station in orbit are no longer effective for Russia due to the current geopolitical environment, he pointed out.
Borisov also acknowledged in April that the Russian station modules have exhausted their lifespans.
The ISS was launched in 1998 as a joint effort by Russian, American, Japanese, Canadian and European space agencies. It’s divided into Russian and American sections, with the latter being run by the US and other participants of the project.
Roscosmos had earlier shared the sketches of its replacement for the ISS, the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS). It’s planned to make the station automated, with the cosmonauts only arriving there to service and replace the equipment. ROSS will consist of four modules and a spacecraft-maintenance platform. It’s being designed to host a crew of two to four people.
