Russia decides to leave the International Space Station

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The International Space Station has its name for a reason. The orbiting laboratory has hosted astronauts from all over the world during its many years of operation. As new material has been installed on the spacecraft, its capabilities have increased and a lot of science is being conducted there. Over the years, the two main partners that operate the space station have been the United States (NASA) and Russia (Roscosmos). Now one of these partners is weighing the heavy decision to pull out. Hint: it’s not NASA.

As the Russian news agency TASS reports, Russian officials have decided it is time for the country to decide to withdraw from the International Space Station. The decision would be made after a technical inspection and study of the spacecraft itself, a number of calculations and a risk assessment. Put simply, Russia no longer thinks the space station is suitable for long-term research efforts, and from 2025 it may not feel comfortable sending its scientists there.

There seems to be at least some information lost in the translation of the original Russian reports and what is reported on some news sites. Some media say Russia has already decided to leave the station while others quote Russian officials as saying they are still weighing the decision. Either way, it is clear that Russia is no longer “all in” on the ISS and it attributes this feeling to the technical status of the spacecraft itself.

Russia recently carried out risk assessments for the spacecraft, and some of the country’s top specialists predicted “failure of many elements on board the ISS” after 2025. The country has already agreed to cooperate with NASA and its other partners on the ISS project until at least 2024, when it can decide that this is sufficient.

A statement from Roscosmos doesn’t offer much assurance anyway:

“We have 2024 as the deadline agreed with our partners for the work of the ISS. After that, decisions will be made based on the technical condition of the station’s modules, most of which have exhausted their lifespan, as well as our plans to deploy a next-generation national orbital gas station.

It would be interesting to see what NASA would do if its main partner ISS decided to withdraw from the program in 2025. The spacecraft has spent more than two decades in space, gradually expanding as NASA and Russia expanded it, added more science equipment, tested various modules for usability. Many new discoveries have been made during its time in space, but no one would say it’s the most modern machine to orbit the Earth. Leaks have appeared several times, especially from the Russian side of the spacecraft. Eventually, it will have to be totally replaced, but no one really knows when that will happen. For the moment, it is still the benchmark for scientists who have to work in microgravity.

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See the original version of this article on BGR.com

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