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Russia has informed NASA that an immediate withdrawal from the International Space Station is unlikely

Russian officials from his field space informed their US counterparts that the Moscow would like to continue the flights of its cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS) until the construction and operation of their own orbital station, as a high-ranking official of the International Space Station told Reuters yesterday NASA.

Along with the statements of a senior Russian space official released yesterday, the latest indications are that Russia is now at least six years away from ending its space cooperation with the USAwhich evolves over a period of time longer than two decades.

A rift in the International Space Station program appeared closer on Tuesday when Yuri Borisov, the newly appointed director general of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, surprised NASA by announcing that Moscow intended to withdraw from the cooperation framework. for the ISS “after 2024”.

Kathy Luders, manager of the space operations sector at NASA, said in an interview that Russian officials later on Tuesday informed NASA that Roscosmos would like to remain in the existing cooperation framework, as the Russia is working to have its own operational orbital station, which will be named ROSS.

“We have no indication at any working level that anything has changedLueders told Reuters yesterday, Wednesday, adding that NASA’s relations with Roscosmos remain “at the usual levels of cooperation.”

The International Space Station, a space laboratory the size of a football field, orbits at about 400 kilometers above the earth. For more than two decades, the Space Station has hosted both American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts as part of space cooperation. Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries participate in the mentioned framework of space cooperation.

Space cooperation between the US and Russia is one dimension of the framework bilateral cooperation, while its future continuation is uncertain and has been called into question since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, as the bilateral framework for relations deteriorated in a number of dimensions as the Biden administration imposed economic sanctions against Moscow.

THE war in Ukraine it also caused tensions between Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA). A formal agreement to extend Russian participation in the ISS beyond 2024 has yet to be reached.

NASA, Roscosmos and ESA as well as other countries involved in the space station program plan to discuss the prospect extension of each member in the framework of cooperation of the space laboratory up to 2030during a periodic meeting of the board that oversees the station’s management.

This meeting will take place tomorrow, according to Luders.

As reported by the Athens News Agency, Roscosmos posted on its website yesterday an interview with Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the Russian team on the ISS. He stated that Russia should stay at the station until the operation of ROSS.

According to Solovyov, ROSS it will be fully built and put into orbit sometime in 2028.

Source: News Beast

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