Russia commits to ISS until 2024; plans to build own station

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has pledged support for the International Space Station (ISS) through 2024, but will look to build its own orbiting base after that time.

According to Discovery News, the announcement came earlier this week and reverses previous claims by Russian officials that the country would withdraw from the 15-nation program when current agreements expired in 2020. Their new four-year commitment puts pressure on officials in Europe, Canada, and Japan to agree to a similar extension, the website added.

A Russian space station

Those decisions are pending, but this week’s announcement also confirms that Roscosmos has plans to set up its own space outpost in the near future. The officials plan to reposition three of its modules, none of which have actually been launched yet, to form the base of a new, Russian-owned and operated facility that will serve as the base for manned missions to the moon.

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“Detailed study and the final decisions are planned after the synthesis of reports of heads of rocket and space industry in subsequent meetings,” Yuri Koptev, chairman of the Roscosmos’ Scientific and Technical Council said in a statement. “There was a general coordinated point of view. [The council] approved the basic concept of the Russian manned space flight until 2025. We will take into account possible changes in funding, and the program will be updated.”

On Twitter, former ISS commander and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield called the reports “excellent news, especially when read between the rhetoric.” He added that the space station was “a key global symbol.” However, not everyone shared Hadfield’s enthusiasm about the news.

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“The International Space Station was a focus for everybody and although its life is going to be extended, it’s still going to be limited,” Martin Barstow, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, told The Guardian. “The collaborative part of that project may go, and it would be bad if it were lost. The way to avoid fighting is to work together on international significant projects. In the next ten years things could change quite dramatically.”

“It sounds like a change from having an international collaboration to going their own way,” added Andrew Coates, head of planetary science at University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory. “But international collaboration will re-emerge in the future as something very important for getting anything funded in human exploration.”

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Russia reportedly went back on their decision to drop ISS support by 2020 due to the ongoing economic crisis in that area, which is said to be due to low oil prices and sanctions from the West over ongoing turmoil in the Ukraine. Roscosmos is currently the only space agency capable of transporting crewmembers to the space station, although NASA is aiming to have commercially-owned space taxis ready for service by 2017.

The Russian-built Zarya module, which was launched in 1998, served as the building block of the ISS, and the Zvezda that launched in 2002 serves as the outpost’s control module, Discovery News said. The station’s exterior truss, power, cooling and communications systems were built by NASA. The US, Europe, and Japan own laboratory modules, and Canada owns the facility’s robotic arm.

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