Cosmic-scale isolation: Russia will leave the ISS and build its own station

Russia will leave the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and focus on building its own station, reports TheGuardian.

Фото: Depositphotos

This was announced on July 26 by the head of the space department. This will end a symbolic 20-year orbital partnership between Moscow and the West.

Yuri Borisov, the country's newly appointed head of cosmonautics, said during a meeting with Vladimir Putin that Russia would fulfill its obligations to its ISS partners before withdrawing from the project.

“The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said, to which Putin replied: “Good.”

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Borisov's statement confirmed earlier statements by Dmitry Rogozin about Moscow's intention to leave the station after 2024. Earlier, Rogozin threatened to end the partnership if the US, EU and Canada did not lift sanctions on businesses associated with the Russian space industry.

The first version of the ISS was launched in 1998, and astronauts from a number of Western countries and Russia have lived there continuously since 2002, the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit in history.

The station was seen as a symbol of the partnership between the two space superpowers, Russia and the United States, after the end of the Cold War. Speaking in 2001 with then US President George W. Bush, Putin called the ISS an example of "very successful" bilateral ties between the two countries.

Shortly after Borisov's meeting with Putin, the country's space agency, Roskosmos, posted on its social media an image of what it says is a plan to set up its own orbital outpost. The plan stated that the space station would initially accommodate two Russian astronauts, and eventually their number would increase to four.

On July 26, a senior NASA official told Reuters that Russia had not announced its intention to withdraw from the ISS.

Despite widespread condemnation of Russia's actions in Ukraine, space has remained one of the last areas of cooperation between Moscow and the West.

Earlier this month, NASA and Roscosmos entered into an agreement that astronauts would continue to fly Russian rockets, and Russian cosmonauts would fly to the ISS using private US rocket company SpaceX, starting in the fall.

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The agreement ensures that there will always be at least one American and one Russian aboard the ISS to keep both sides of the outpost running smoothly.

However, Borisov's latest announcement of his retirement from the ISS did not come as a surprise, given Moscow's growing isolation.

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