Russia To Continue Its Partnership on The Space Station With US

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NASA hints that there are other plans in store for Moscow after Russia made the decision to leave the International Space Station in 2024. This comes days after the chief of Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, Yuri Borisov informed Vladimir Putin the president of Russia that it would be leaving the International Space Station in the next 2 years.

Officials of the American space agency NASA claim that Moscow is interested to keep flying its cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). They plan on continuing till they have set up their own orbital outpost and made it operational. As per this statement it is quite clear that Russia is going to extend its partnership with the US for the next six years instead of the originally planned two years.

The Russian space agency chief declared that it will fulfill their obligations as that is the morally right thing to do. “Of course, we will complete our duties, but regarding the decision of our departure in 2024, it has been made.”

In the meantime, Kathy Lueders, the space operations chief of NASA, in an interview reported that Russian officials at a later time told the US space agency that Roscosmos wished to remain in the partnership as Russia works to get its planned orbital outpost, named ROSS, up and running.

Since the Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion against Ukraine almost four months ago, the relationship between the two nuclear powers has hit at an all time low. As a result of the war on Ukraine, Moscow has been a target of harsh sanctions that the US under Joe Biden has on Russia. These have been imposed with an aim of slowing down the modernisation of the Russian military and their space programs. And the US are not the only one to impose sanctions; European nations followed suit, including countries like France and Britain, who cut down relations and imposed restrictions.

There has been no formal agreement aimed at extending Russia’s ISS participation beyond 2024. NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and the station’s other partners plan to discuss the prospect of extending each other’s presence in the laboratory to 2030 during a periodic meeting on Friday of the board that oversees the station’s management, Lueders said.