Earlier, Roscosmos General Director Yuri Borisov reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the decision made to withdraw from the ISS project after 2024. Borisov later said that Russia will most likely participate in the project until 2028. Now the decision to extend the ISS until 2030 has been made by the United States and Japan, and the European Space Agency also supported this initiative.
NASA head Nelson is confident that Russia will continue cooperation on the ISS until 2030. The head of NASA explained his confidence by saying that, despite the difficult geopolitical situation, he “sees professional relations between the Russian cosmonauts and the (American) astronauts on board, friendship between the crews, as well as between the mission control centers in Moscow and Houston, (the preservation of relations) in issues of crew exchange, which we plan to continue.”
Nelson recalled that “at the height of the Cold War in 1975, American and Soviet spacecraft and crews became friends forever,” adding that American astronaut Thomas Stafford, Leonov’s friend and colleague on the Soyuz mission, spoke at the funeral of Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 2019. – “Apollo”.
In July 2022, as part of the ISS program, Roscosmos and NASA signed an agreement on cross-flights of Russian cosmonauts on American manned spacecraft Crew Dragon and American astronauts on Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz MS.
In the fall of 2022, flights began by NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio on the Soyuz MS-22 and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina on the Crew Dragon (Crew-5 mission). The implementation of the agreement makes it possible, in the event of a cancellation or significant delay in the launch of a Russian or American spacecraft, to ensure the presence on board the ISS of at least one Roscosmos cosmonaut and one NASA astronaut to service, respectively, the Russian and American segments of the station.
On March 2, a Falcon-9 launch vehicle carrying the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft was launched from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which will carry the crew of the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station. The crew includes cosmonaut of the Roscosmos State Corporation Andrei Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, UAE astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi.
The Russian orbital station is planned to be deployed in 2027; the first module of the station can be launched into orbit in 2028. The ROS will be placed in a high-latitude orbit with an inclination of 97 degrees, and not at 51.6 degrees, like the ISS, so that the territory of the Russian Federation can be better viewed from the station. The mass of the station should reach 122 tons, and the sealed volume should be 505 cubic meters. According to the developers, it will be much larger than the Russian segment of the ISS.