Russia plans to withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024. This is reported by international news agencies. The new boss of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Yuri Borisov, said on Tuesday that Russia is working on its own space station. The International Space Station (ISS) is a joint project of the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan and has been in orbit since 1998.
Borisov was deputy prime minister until recently and was named the new space boss two weeks ago by the Kremlin. Russia has been hinting at ceasing participation in the ISS for some time, but the decision to “stop after 2024” has now been finalized, Borisov said in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday afternoon. He responded approvingly.
Also read: Russians spend more than six hours working on a Dutch robot arm for ISS
Since Russia is waging war in Ukraine, the previous boss of Roskosmos had threatened several times to end the cooperation and even said that Russia could wreck the ISS. The space agency also shared a video in which the Russian part of the space station was disconnected, leaving other astronauts alone in the universe.
Russian-American flights
Yet earlier this month, the US space agency NASA and Russia signed a new agreement on joint flights to the ISS starting next fall. It is planned that two American astronauts will fly on Russian Soyuz rockets and two Russian cosmonauts will fly on American SpaceX rockets for the first time.
According to Borisov, Russia will abide by its obligations to ISS partners before withdrawing from the project. NASA said Tuesday afternoon that it had not heard anything from Roskosmos about the decision to stop participating in the International Space Station. “Nothing is official yet,” NASA chief Robyn Gatens said, according to Reuters.