Russia has decided to leave the International Space Station “after 2024,” the new head of the Moscow Space Agency, President Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday.
The announcement comes in light of the tension between the Kremlin and the West, over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine, and unprecedented packages of sanctions against Russia.
Russia and the United States have worked together on the International Space Station, which has been in orbit since 1998.
“Of course, we will fulfill all our obligations to our partners, but the decision was made to leave this station after 2024,” Roscosmos head, who was appointed to the post in mid-July, Yuri Borisov, told Putin in comments published by the Kremlin.
“I think that by that time, we will start preparing a Russian orbital station,” he said, describing it as a “priority” of the space programme. Putin replied that it was “good”.
Space exploration was among a very small number of areas in which cooperation between Russia, the United States and its allies has been kept out of the tension over Ukraine and others.
But Borisov pointed out that the space sector is “in a difficult situation.”
He indicated that he would seek “to raise the ceiling and, above all, provide the necessary space services for the Russian economy,” referring to navigation, communication, data transmission, and more.
In contrast, NASA Administrator Robin Gittens said the United States had received “no official notification” from Russia about the plans it had just announced to leave the International Space Station “after 2024”.
“We have not received any official notification from the (Russian) partner regarding today’s news,” Gittens told a news conference.
In turn, NASA intends to refer the International Space Station, which is a symbol of unity in the post-Cold War era, to retirement after 2030 as it seeks to transform its working mechanism through cooperation with commercial space stations. Gittens suggested that Russia might be looking at its own transformation mechanism.
When asked if she wanted to end US-Russian space cooperation, Gittens replied, “No, absolutely.”
And she considered that the Russians were “good partners like all our partners, and we want to continue together.”
The sending of the first man into space in 1961, and the launch of the first artificial satellite four years earlier, were considered among the most important achievements of the Soviet space program and remained an important source of national pride in Russia.
But experts say that the Russian space agency is no longer only a shadow of its previous era, and in recent years it has suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals, and the loss of a number of satellites and spacecraft.
Borisov, who was deputy prime minister and had military experience, replaced Dmitriy Rogozin, who was known for his blunt statements and strange behavior.