Explained: Why does Russia want to leave the International Space Station?

After more than two decades of international cooperation in the field of space research, Russia announced this week that it will withdraw from the International Space Station in 2025 and that it will build and manage its own floating laboratory which will be put into orbit. by 2030.

The decision to leave also comes at a time when relations between Russia and the United States are steadily deteriorating on several fronts, with the two powers also accusing each other of militarizing space.

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According to the Interfax news agency, the head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, reportedly said: “If in 2030, according to our plans, we can put it into orbit, it will be a colossal breakthrough.”

“The will is there to take a new step in global human space exploration.”

What is the International Space Station doing?

A space station is essentially a large spacecraft that remains in low earth orbit for long periods of time. It’s like a big laboratory in space, and allows astronauts to come on board and stay for weeks or months to perform microgravity experiments.

The Mir space station of the former Soviet Union, and later operated by Russia, operated from 1986 to 2001. The ISS has been in space since 1998 and is known for exemplary cooperation between the five participating space agencies who run it: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) and CSA (Canada).

For more than 20 years since its launch, humans have continuously lived and conducted scientific investigations of the $ 150 billion ISS under microgravity conditions, being able to make inroads into research impossible on Earth.

According to NASA, 243 people from 19 countries have so far visited the ISS, and the floating laboratory has hosted more than 3,000 research and educational surveys from researchers from 108 countries and regions, conducting cutting-edge research in various disciplines, including including biology, human physiology and physical, material and spatial sciences.

The recent US-Russian space rivalry

Russia played a crucial role in the success of the ISS, other space agencies relying on advanced Russian modular space station construction technology to build the space station in the early years, according to a report by Financial Times.

Russia was also indispensable because of its Soyuz passenger vehicle, which was the only means of transporting astronauts to the ISS since the United States withdrew its space shuttle program in 2011. This reliance on Russia came to an end last year, however, when the United States began using the SpaceX system developed by Elon Musk.

This was a big blow for Roscosmos, as it meant the end of the funding received from NASA to transport astronauts to the space station. Between 2011 and 2019, NASA spent $ 3.9 billion on Soyuz flights, according to the report.

Next year, the United States is also expected to have another domestic option outside of SpaceX, as Boeing’s delayed Starliner capsule is expected to become operational.

The development also comes at a time when relations between the West and Russia continue Worse and worse. The United States blamed the Kremlin for carrying out the “SolarWinds” hack and interfering in the 2020 election. Last week, Russia was criticized by the NATO alliance after being accused by the Czech Republic to be involved in an explosion in 2014 in a weapons depot.

Last year, the United States accused Russia of carrying out a weapons test after a projectile was reportedly fired from a Russian satellite. Russia, in turn, criticized the United States for treating space as a “military theater”.

So what does Russia plan to do now?

Russia is now planning to build and manage its own space station, which it intends to put into orbit by 2030. According to an Interfax report, its space module is being assembled by the company Energia and is expected to cost the minus $ 5 billion.

The station would orbit Earth at a higher latitude, allowing it to better observe the polar regions, especially as Russia plans to expand. the arctic sea route as the ice melts.

Building a new station would also help Russia overcome challenges its cosmonauts currently face on the aging ISS, such as performing experiments and adapting the latest technology to a hardware architecture that is more than two decades old. .

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said: “We cannot risk life. [of our cosmonauts]. The situation which today is linked to the structure and aging of the metal can lead to irreversible consequences – a catastrophe. We must not let this happen ”.

However, leaving the ISS would also mean that Russian researchers would lose access to a laboratory that went through more than 15 years of engineering and assembly work to build it, and whose research potential is only expected to really take off until now. NASA has ruled out removing the ISS until at least 2028 and may continue to use it after that by improving key systems, according to the FT report.

Borisov also said Russia will run the space station itself, but left the door open for other countries to participate. Last year, Russia rejected an American offer to be part of the Artemis program, and last month signed an agreement with China to jointly develop a moon base.