Moscow. September 13. INTERFAX.RU – The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, NASA) plans to use the International Space Station (ISS) until 2030, said the head of NASA's manned program, Katie Leaders, as part of her report at the 2021 Humans to Mars summit.
“The ISS is an important project for us, we continue to use the station and hope to continue until 2030, we are now trying to extend its useful life in order to further develop and test systems that will help us in our mission to land a man on the moon,” Leaders said.
Earlier it became known that Russia could withdraw from the ISS project from 2025, transferring responsibility for its segment to its partners in the station. An alternative would be the creation of a national orbital station, the first module of which is planned to be launched in 2025 and completed in 2035. Russia decided to build its own space station due to the deterioration of the technical condition of the Russian segment of the station.
In October 2020, Vladimir Soloviev, Flight Director of the Russian Segment of the ISS, announced that Roscosmos specialists predict an avalanche-like failure of numerous elements on board the ISS after 2025. According to him, due to the increased costs, experts consider it necessary to revise the terms of further participation in the program and focus on the implementation of programs for orbital stations. For his part, Rogozin said that about 80% of the equipment in the Russian segment of the ISS has exhausted its service life, and the cost of its maintenance after 2025 will be comparable to the cost of creating a new station.
Rogozin announced that he plans to discuss the future fate of the ISS with the head of NASA. He noted that Russia may abandon plans to leave the ISS after 2025, if it is possible to agree with the United States on the commercial use of the Russian segment of the station.
On June 5, 2021, Rogozin and the new head of NASA, Bill Nelson, held telephone conversations. According to Roscosmos, Nelson accepted the invitation of the head of the Russian state corporation to visit Russia and proposed to extend the operation of the ISS until 2030. Rogozin then noted that discussion of the future fate of the ISS is possible only after the lifting of American sanctions against Roscosmos enterprises.
Several Russian space enterprises, among them the Samara RCC Progress and the Central Scientific Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIIMash), were included in the US sanctions lists. This means that US companies will now need to obtain special licenses for export, re-export or transfer.
