Russia will retire from the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and focus on building its own outpost in orbit, the country’s space chief has said, in a move that will end a symbolic two-decade long orbital partnership between Moscow and the west.
Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed head of the Roscosmos space agency, said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin that Russia would fulfill its obligations to its partners on the ISS before abandoning the project.
“The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said, to which Putin replied: “Good.”
Borisov’s statement reaffirmed earlier statements made by former Roscosmos chief Dmitri Rogozin about Moscow’s intention to abandon the station after 2024. The outspoken Rogozin had threatened to end the partnership unless the United States, the EU and Canada to lift their sanctions against companies linked to Russia. space industry
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The first version of the ISS was launched in 1998, and astronauts from several Western countries and Russia have lived there continuously since 2002, the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit in history. The station was widely seen as a symbol of the post-Cold War partnership between the two space superpowers, Russia and the US. Speaking in 2001 alongside then US President George W Bush, Putin praised the ISS as an example of “very successful” bilateral ties between the two countries.
Shortly after Borisov’s meeting with Putin, Roscosmos posted an image on its social media channels of what it said was a project for its own orbiting outpost. The plan said the space station would house two Russian astronauts at first, eventually expanding to four.
A senior NASA official told Reuters on Tuesday that Russia has not communicated its intention to withdraw from the ISS.
Despite widespread condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, space had remained one of the last avenues of cooperation between Moscow and the West.
NASA and Roscosmos struck a deal this month for astronauts to continue riding Russian rockets and for Russian cosmonauts to board the ISS with private US rocket company SpaceX starting in the fall.
The agreement ensured that the ISS would always have at least one American and one Russian on board to keep both sides of the outpost running smoothly, Russian and NASA officials said.
However, Borisov’s latest announcement to leave the ISS will not come as a surprise given Moscow’s growing isolation. The Russian space agency caused controversy this month when it released images of its cosmonauts aboard the ISS celebrating Moscow’s capture of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region.