Russia will leave the International Space Station "after 2024
Russia will leave the International Space Station "after 2024"
Posted in: Last updated: Moscow (AFP) - Russia announced Tuesday that it will leave the International Space Station "after 2024", raising questions about the survival of this manned laboratory in orbit, amid Russian-Western tensions over the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The assembly of the International Space Station, which is a model for international cooperation between Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia, began in 1998. It was scheduled to be out of service in 2024, but the US space agency (NASA) estimated that it could operate until 2030.
Russia plays a key role in keeping the station in orbit, but some of its spacecraft are affected by Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over the attack on Ukraine.
The Russian announcement to leave the International Space Station comes ten days after the appointment of a new head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), Yuri Borisov, who succeeded Dmitry Rogozin.
"Of course, we will fulfill all our commitments to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 was made," Borisov told Russian President Vladimir Putin in comments published by the Kremlin.
Minutes later, NASA Administrator Robin Gittens said the United States had received "no official notification" from Russia about the plans it had just announced to leave the International Space Station "after 2024".
In turn, NASA President Bill Nelson said in a statement that the US space agency is "committed to continuing the operations of the International Space Station safely until 2030, and is coordinating with its partners."
For his part, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday that "the Russian announcement surprised us," stressing that Washington considers this decision "unfortunate" in light of the "valuable cooperation" that the Russian and American space agencies have enjoyed for years.
Russian space station
On Tuesday, Borisov indicated that Russia would begin construction of a "Russian orbital station" that would become the "main priority" of the national space program.
He explained, "The future of Russian manned flights must depend, above all, on a systematic and balanced scientific program, so that each flight contributes to increasing our knowledge in the field of space."
But Russian space analyst Vitaly Egorov said that this decision would mean "a disruption of Russian manned flights for years", because Russia is still far from having its own infrastructure in orbit.
"There will be no Russian orbital station in the year 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026," he told AFP, noting that "establishing a good orbital station within three years is almost unrealistic."
Even with the most generous funding, he said, it would take at least ten years.
Hence, the Russian "RKK Energia" group, which designs and builds the "Soyuz" spacecraft, announced Tuesday that the construction of the Russian orbital station will not begin until 2028.
"If the decision is taken on its construction by the end of the year, the first stage will begin in 2028 with the launch of an energy and science unit with the Angara missile," RIA Novosti news agency quoted Vladimir Solovyov, general designer of the Russian group, as saying.
"A difficult situation"
Until his appointment as head of Roscosmos in mid-July, Borisov, 65, was deputy prime minister in charge of Russia's military-industrial complex, which includes the space sector.
In front of Putin, Borisov pointed out that the space sector is "in a difficult situation." He indicated that he would seek "to raise the ceiling and, above all, provide the necessary space services for the Russian economy," referring to navigation, communication, data transmission, and more.
Russian-Western cooperation in the space field has been affected by the attack launched by Russia since February 24 against its Ukrainian neighbor.
Western sanctions, taken after the Russian invasion, affect the Russian aviation industry in part and may affect the International Space Station, some of whose supplies may experience disruptions.
Rogozin, the former head of Roscosmos, had hinted that because of this, Russia would abandon the idea of extending the life of the International Space Station until 2030.
He confirmed in March that without the Russians, the International Space Station would crash on Earth because only the Russian side had the means to fix the 500-ton station's orbit.
Sending the first human into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier was considered one of the most important achievements of the Soviet space program and remains an important source of national pride in Russia.
But experts say that the Russian space agency is no longer only a shadow of its former era, and in recent years it has suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and spacecraft.
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