Washington sees this as a “regrettable” decision. Russia’s decision to leave the International Space Station “after 2024” marks a turning point in terms of international cooperation in the field of space.
“The decision has been made to abandon this station after 2024,” Russian space agency director Roscomos Yuri Borrissov said during a filmed interview with President Vladimir Putin, assuring Russia will continue to honor its commitments as a partner so far.
An expected and regretted announcement
Did the other partner countries expect it? On the US side, it is claimed that the withdrawal of the Russians from the ISS is a real “surprise”.
“Yet the Russians have been talking about 2024 for years,” Olivier Sanguy, scientific mediator at the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, told BFMTV.com.
The European Space Agency stresses that this decision taken by Moscow “is not new and has already been mentioned before”.
Olivier Sanguy explains that it was NASA that tried to postpone the deadline for this Russian exit, since the US agency was not yet ready to maintain the station in its orbit on its own. The international space station is based on two segments. : the first, the Russian, is in charge with the Zaria module of keeping the ISS in orbit while the American-European-Japanese-Canadian segment is in charge of electrical energy and the proper performance of scientific experiments on board the spacecraft .
“They are all trained to work together, and they are in such circumstances that they can only work together,” he explains to France Information Isabelle Sourbès-Verger, research director of the CNRS specializing in issues of cooperation in space exploration.
The place of the war in Ukraine in this decision.
An interdependence that the rest of the partner countries had until 2030, the year in which the station will be withdrawn. Do the statements by the Russian space agency therefore sound like a new break between Moscow and Western countries?
“It is above all an appeasement”, analyzes Olivier Sanguy for BFMTV.com, “with the war in Ukraine, the previous director of Rocosmos was very vindictive: he attacked Presidents Biden and Macron and almost hinted that Russia could leave the ISS of the overnight.
Didier Schmitt is of the same opinion. The European Space Agency’s chief strategist for human and robotic exploration even sees a “quite diplomatic” approach on the part of Roscosmos. “In a way, they invite NASA to prepare to keep the station alone from 2025 in case they leave”, he develops him for The Figaro. If the conflict that has pitted Kyiv against Moscow for several months “may have confirmed Russia’s desire to leave the ISS before the 2030 deadline”, Olivier Sanguy explains that this is actually the result of “multifactorial decisions”. .
The arrival of the SpaceX capsule, the company of billionaire Elon Musk, on board the ISS could also play into this decision. “We no longer need your ship to join the International Space Station”, remembers Isabelle Sourbès-Verger for France info. Russia has in fact lost its monopoly on the transportation of astronauts with its launchers and Soyuz ships, allowing Americans and Europeans to leave American soil again with the Crew Dragon capsules.
“There is a component of cooperation in space programs but also a strong component of sovereignty”, recalls Olivier Sanguy for BFMTV.com, “through space, a State shows what it is capable of doing, it is a bit of a showcase of the excellence .”
The specter of a new conquest of space
The choice of calendar by the Russians is no accident: 2024 is the year that Roscosmos has set itself to launch the first module of its own orbital station called ROSS (Russian Orbital Service Station). This will be, from this date, “the main priority” of the Russian space program, Yuri Borissov said on Tuesday. asked by The FigaroDidier Schmitt did not see Russia stopping the ISS “before they had another solution to send their astronauts.”
Moscow follows Beijing here, which has already launched its first modules for its own Chinese space station. And the two great powers are also going to join forces for a project of another magnitude with a great objective in sight: the Moon. Facing them are the other ISS partner countries that have joined the Artemis program with the Gateway station in lunar orbit, the first two modules of which will be launched in 2024.
Is a new space race launched? “It’s a real debate within the space community. […] the reality is that we have, at least, an emulation to have an important geopolitical position”, judge Olivier Sanguy for BFMTV.com.
Source: BFM TV
