Russian space officials have told their US counterparts that Moscow hopes to remain on the International Space Station (ISS) at least until its own orbiting outpost is built in 2028, the space operations chief of the NASA to Reuters.
The assurance from Russia on Tuesday came after the newly appointed head of its space agency, Roscosmos, had surprised NASA earlier in the day by announcing that Moscow intended to end more than two decades of cooperation in space. space station “after 2024”.
“We’re not getting any indication at any working level that anything has changed,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s head of space operations, told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that the US space agency’s relationship with Roscosmos they remain “business as usual”.
Any member of the ISS must give one year’s notice of withdrawal from the international agreement.
Russia’s space program has a long history. As the Soviet Union, it launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957; launched the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; launched the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963; and both performed the first spacewalk and built the first space station. Its Soyuz rockets, which carry their cosmonauts to the ISS, are workhorses designed since the end of the Cold War era.
However, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Roscosmos has faced many challenges, both financial and political. More recently, he has been accused of corruption.
Over the years, the then head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, has made outlandish threats and suggestions to NASA. When war broke out in Ukraine, he threatened to abandon American astronauts aboard the ISS, with a video, engaged in a heated exchange on Twitter with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, and said to NASA that it would have to use brooms to get to the station.
RIA Novosti, controlled by the Russian government, pic.twitter.com/fj2coK1xR1
—@NASAWatch
Russia has also focused more on military uses of space and last November conducted an anti-satellite test that produced more than 1,500 pieces of traceable debris. The act was widely condemned by the space community and other countries.
Russians continue to work and live aboard the ISS, and in September, cosmonaut Anna Kikina will fly aboard a SpaceX rocket as a mission specialist to the station.
NASA plans to continue using the ISS until at least 2030.
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