After Russia invaded Ukraine, it made statements that it would withdraw from the International Space Station program by the middle of this decade. Despite this, it has internal discussions about continuing its participation in the International Space Station (ISS).
Sergei Krikalev, head of human space programs at Roscosmos, said in a statement that the Russian space agency is “holding up with the government to expand its participation in the ISS program and hopes to obtain permission to continue next year.”
This announcement comes just months after Roscosmos chairman Yuri Borisov announced Russia’s plans to leave the station after 2024 and build its own orbital station instead. The ISS is operated jointly between space agencies from the USA, Russia, Canada, Japan and Europe. America commits to operating the station by 2030.
But Krikalev thinks a new Russian station may not be ready until 2025: “We know it won’t be very [quickly], so we’ll probably keep flying [on the ISS] until we have a new infrastructure to allow it. Continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit is important.”
On October 5, a cosmonaut flew to IS for the first time aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, part of a recent astronaut transport exchange agreement between the United States and Russia. As part of the deal, American astronaut Francisco Rubio was launched to the ISS in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft last month.
“We will continue this practice to increase the robustness of our exchange program and to make our program more reliable,” Krikalev said.
While Russia and the United States have cooperated on the ISS for decades, tensions between the two countries have escalated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Despite this tension, NASA’s ISS program manager Joel Montalbano says at a media briefing that American personnel are still working with Roscosmos in Russia, at the Moscow Mission Control Center and elsewhere. He adds that NASA is in frequent contact with the American Embassy in Moscow and does not expect any impact on the next Soyuz launch, which will carry an American astronaut.
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