On Tuesday, Russia disclosed that it has concluded plans to leave the International Space Station ‘after 2024’, amid tensions with the West, in a strategic move which many analysts warned could lead to a halt to manned flights.
Africa Today News, New York reports that relations between Moscow and the West deteriorate following Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine and numerous rounds of crippling sanctions against Russia, including its space industry, the long-promised step has now been confirmed.
According to space specialists, the country’s space sector would be severely impacted and the manned flight programme, a major source of Russian pride, would suffer significantly.
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‘Of course we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,’ Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.
‘I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station,” Borisov added, calling it the domestic space programme’s main “priority’.
‘Good,’ Putin replied.
The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, although US space agency NASA says it can remain operational until 2030.
The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.
Washington has not received “any official word” from Russia yet, Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS for NASA, said during a conference on the outpost.
Asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: ‘No, absolutely not.’
Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.