NASA has not yet received an “official” notification of the Russians’ willingness to leave the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024, a senior US space agency official said on Tuesday.
“We have not received any official statement from our partner regarding today’s news,” said Robyn Gatens, ISS director at NASA Headquarters.
“We will discuss their plans further,” the representative told a conference in Washington.
America wants extend the season until 2030but the new head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that Russia would stop participating in the program “after 2024”.
“We will certainly fulfill all the obligations with our partners” on the ISS, “but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has already been made,” said the head of the Russian space agency, Yuri Borissov, after a videoconference meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the same conference in Washington, and when asked if the United States wanted the Russians to withdraw from the ISS, Robyn Gatens replied: “Not at all. They have been good partners, as have all of our partners, and we look forward to continuing together, as a partnership, to operate the space station throughout the decade.”
The ISS is the result of an international collaboration and NASA has repeatedly said that cannot function without the contributions of the various partners.
The Russians, like us, are thinking about what’s next for them,” Gatens said, detailing that like the United States, they are “planning a transition after 2030 to commercial low-orbit stations.”
“They have a similar project. So they are also thinking about this transition, ”she concluded.
Tensions between the United States and Russia have peaked since the start of Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine in February, but so far the two countries continued to collaborate in space. American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts are permanently on the ISS.
Moscow had warned in mid-March that Western sanctions against Russia for the war against Ukraine could affect the operation of the Russian ships that supply the ISS, and therefore the Russian segment of the station, in charge of correcting the orbit of the structure.
“The Russian segment makes sure that the station’s orbit is corrected, on average, 11 times a year, including to avoid space debris,” the former head of Roscosmos explained at the time, noting that the Russian agency had sent appeals. to Northern partners. Americans (NASA), Canadians (ASC) and Europeans (ESA) to “demand the lifting of illegal sanctions against Russian companies”.
On March 1, the US space agency NASA indicated that it was working on solutions to keep the ISS in orbit without Russian help.
Source: Observadora
