By Alexander
Smith
Russia announced on Tuesday that it will leave the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024, ending the most ambitious project of global collaboration that for a long time was a key symbol of cooperation after the Cold War.
The decision comes as Russia and the United States and their allies are at loggerheads over the invasion of Ukraine, and raises new questions about the future of multilateral collaboration in space.
Russian cosmonauts before leaving for the ISS in March 2022. Roscosmos Space Agency via AP
The head of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos), Yuri Borisov, told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that Russia will leave the ISS to concentrate on building its own station, state media reported.
"The decision on the withdrawal of this station after 2024 is made," Borisov said, according to the Tass news agency.
Construction of the space station in Earth orbit began in 1998 and was completed in 2011, hailed as an example of reconciliation by the warring superpowers.
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Russian officials had already hinted that they would leave the station after 2024, when the international agreement expires, to work on their own station, which they want to have operational by 2025.
Borisov, who was appointed director of the Russian space agency earlier this month, told Putin on Tuesday that he would focus his duties on that project and guaranteed that until then Russia would fulfill its obligations to its partners before leaving, according to Tass.
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The main goal of the Russian space agency should be to "raise the bar" and provide the country with "necessary space services" such as global navigation, communication and meteorological data, he said.
The space industry "is in a difficult situation," he said.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is also affecting the European energy supply or world food reserves.
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But, despite everything, NASA and Roscosmos reached an agreement in early July so that American astronauts continue to travel on Russian rockets and Russian cosmonauts fly to the ISS on ships from the US company SpaceX starting in the fall, according to reported the information agency The Associated Press.
That agreement guaranteed that the space station would always have at least one American and one Russian on board to maintain it.
