Russia has already decided to pull out of the International Space Station, likely in about two years, chief of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said.
In an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel, Rogozin said that the decision on the timing of the end of Russia’s participation in the ISS program has already been made, but will not be announced yet.
While Rogozin didn’t say when will Russia’s pull out from the ISS, he affirmed it would give at least a year’s notice “following our obligations”.
Russia did not formally agree to the extension, in January this year, Rogozin had said that Roscosmos and NASA were in talks on extending the operation of the ISS until 2030.
But Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, affected space cooperation between the two countries and Roscosmos’s participation in the extension started to seem unlikely.
Earlier, at a meeting with State Duma deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party, Rogozin said that work on the ISS in the current geopolitical situation is not effective, the report said.
Moscow-based company Energia Space Rocket Corporation has already been assigned the task of making the first basic module for a new Russian orbital station ready in 2025.
At some point, this war will end. All wars do. Will NASA, the ESA, and other space agencies welcome Russia back with open arms when it comes to cooperation in space?
Russian threats don’t seem to carry much weight right now. Their word doesn’t mean much either, since they keep agreeing to civilian evacuations in Ukraine and then attacking the evacuation routes.
