Russia intends to participate in work on the International Space Station (ISS) by 2028. That became clear from a conversation that Russian President Vladimir Putin had on Wednesday with the director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Yuri Borissov. According to the one on the Protocol published on the Kremlin website Borisov mentioned the decision of the Russian government. It is now also time to talk about Russia’s own orbital station.
In July 2022, Borisov announced that Roscosmos wanted to end its cooperation on the ISS in 2024. Two weeks earlier he had replaced Dmitry Rogozin as director of the space agency. Two days after Borissov’s statement, media reports said that Russia probably does not want to say goodbye to the ISS immediately in 2024, but no official statements have yet been made.
Last cooperation with the west
The ISS has been orbiting the earth since 1998 and is a joint project between Russia, the USA, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency ESA. Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on February 24, 2022, the ISS has been the only remaining area in which Russia is cooperating with the West.
A first draft for the planned Russian space station should be ready next summer, Borisov said to Putin. Roughly speaking, the shape of the station and the construction phases have already been decided. The future station should serve to prepare the Russian lunar program. Borisov spoke of a “new orbit” and a “new construction” that should be advantageous for this.
Cosmonautics Day was celebrated in Russia on Wednesday. On April 12, 1961, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space and orbit the earth once. At the moment there are three Russians on the ISS: Sergei Prokopyev, Andrei Fedyaev and Dmitri Petelin. The US space agency NASA assumed last year that the ISS will crash in early 2031.
(anw)
