In this still frame from video provided by Roscosmos, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Korsakov, Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveyev are seen during a welcome ceremony after arriving at the International Space Station, March 18, the first new faces to space since the beginning of the Russian war. in Ukraine The crew emerged from the Soyuz capsule wearing yellow flight suits with blue stripes, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. (Roscosmos/AP)
Russia will withdraw from the International Space Station project “after 2024” after fulfilling its obligations, according to the Kremlin’s reading of a meeting between newly appointed Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov and Russian President Vladimir Putin .
“You know that we are working in the framework of international cooperation on the International Space Station. We will certainly fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but a decision has been made to abandon the station after 2024,” Borisov told Putin in the Kremlin-broadcast reading.
“I think that at this time, we will start to form the Russian orbital station,” Borisov said.
Russia’s withdrawal would be a major blow to the ISS, a model of international cooperation for decades. The announcement comes as the war in Ukraine has deeply strained its relations with the US and Europe.
Robyn Gatens, director of NASA’s International Space Station, said NASA had not received any official word from Russia about the decision to abandon the ISS.
“The Russians, like us, are thinking about what’s next for them. As we’re planning the transition after 2030 to commercially operated space stations in low Earth orbit, they have a similar plan. And so they’re thinking in this transition. Also. We haven’t had any official word from the partner on today’s news, so we’ll talk more about their plan going forward,” Gatens said.
It is not the first time that Russia has threatened to abandon the ISS amid damaging European and US sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Borisov’s predecessor, Dmitry Rogozin, repeatedly threatened to do so before being ousted earlier this month.
But this latest threat has more teeth, and the apparent approval of Putin himself. According to a transcript of a meeting posted on the Kremlin’s website, Putin said “good” after Borisov told him that Roscosmos will start building its own space station after 2024.
Russia’s withdrawal would be a major blow to the ISS, a model of international cooperation for decades.
The news comes less than two weeks after NASA and Roscosmos announced a crew exchange or “seat swap” deal that had been in the works for more than four years. Starting in September, two Russian cosmonauts will launch into US spacecraft from Florida, while two US astronauts will ride Russian rockets into space. It is unclear whether Russia’s decision to withdraw from the ISS after 2024 will affect the crew exchange agreement.
The ISS, which is a collaboration between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment and the US Orbital Segment. The Biden administration announced in December that it had committed to extending the ISS from 2024 to 2030. But Russia, NASA’s number one partner on the ISS, never signed on.
“The Russian segment cannot operate without the electricity on the American side, and the American side cannot operate without the propulsion systems that are on the Russian side,” said former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman on CNN in February. “So you can’t do an amicable divorce. You can’t do a conscious uncoupling.”
Since then, NASA has been exploring ways to move the space station without the help of the Russian segment. In June, a Cygnus cargo ship demonstrated its ability to raise the station’s orbit. But whether the ISS could survive without the Russians is still an open question.
NASA said in February that it intends to continue operating the International Space Station, which was launched in 2000, until the late 2030s, after which the ISS would deorbit and crash in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. Commercially operated space platforms would replace the ISS as a site for scientific research and collaboration, NASA said.
Hear from the Director General of the European Space Agency here: