Variable orbit: Russia faces east after leaving the International Space Station

The International Space Station, the largest global collaboration ever made in science and engineering, has been a cosmopolitan meeting place for astronauts for two decades.

Just this month a Russian Soyuz rocket took a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on April 9 to an orbiting laboratory 420 kilometers from the Earth’s surface. Eight days later, another Soyuz rocket took a different American-Russian trio back to Earth – and on Friday, weather permitting, a U.S. SpaceX craft will take two other Americans, a Japanese and a Frenchman to the 23-year-old station.

So diverse come and go, however, is about to end. Russia announced this week that it will withdraw from the $ 2025 million ISS in 2025, ending the significant period of international cooperation that began in the planning of the perestroika era at the end of the Cold War.

Despite the escalating tensions between Russia and the US over the past decade, space agencies in both countries have continued to work together, along with their European, Japanese and Canadian counterparts. According to Nasa, 243 people from 19 countries have visited the ISS since 2000.

“Although the initial difficulties were different for the Russian and American space agencies to work, we reached the level of operational maturity, so in terms of crew dynamics, I only heard positive things about astronauts and cosmonauts working together,” said Professor Anu Ojha, UK Director of the National Space Academy of the United Kingdom and Adviser to the European Space Agency.

In the early years of the construction and assembly of ISS modules in space from 1998 onwards, the Russians and their western partners depended on each other. “NASA and ESA could not have built the space station without Russian specialization,” Ojha said. “The Russians were masters of the modular construction of space stations.”

Western groups, for their part, needed a Russian rocket to carry materials and people to the ISS. This dependence escalated when NASA withdrew the Space Shuttle in 2011, leaving Soyuz the only passenger vehicle available to carry astronauts into orbit – a source of pride that Russia ended last year when NASA began using Elon Musk’s SpaceX system.

For Roscosmos, the funded Russian space agency, ISS cooperation has meant much-needed access to Western funding. NASA spent $ 3.9 billion on transporting astronauts to the ISS on Soyuz seats after the Shuttle withdrew between 2011 and 2019, according to agency chief inspector Paul Martin.

Although astronaut Mark Vande Hei is not the last to make an American trip to the ISS this month on a Russian rocket, most non-Russian astronauts will travel in a delayed Starliner rocket on SpaceX or Boeing. service next year.

As for Russia, the decision to end its involvement with the ISS expects greater cooperation with space with China – it is part of a broader pivot that will direct the Kremlin to Beijing.

Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 when Western sanctions were imposed on Moscow, cutting off some financial and trade channels, Russia has redoubled its efforts to increase relations with China. Countries have made defense agreements and energy ties, and bilateral trade has nearly doubled since 2010 to reach $ 110 billion in 2019.

Based on the personal chemistry between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two powerful leaders, the relationship has been strengthened because relations with Washington have deteriorated for both countries.

In recent years the hairy rhetoric of Moscow and Washington has intensified, with each accusing the other of wanting to militarize the space. In July, the U.S. accused Russia of launching a launcher from one of its satellites in an alleged weapons test, while Moscow believes the U.S. is “openly a military theater in space.”

Roscosmos last year rejected a U.S. offer to join the NASA-led Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. In March, Russia and China agreed to jointly develop the moon’s base, “to promote the exploration and peaceful use of humanity’s space,” according to the memorandum of understanding.

The Russian space agency said on Wednesday it planned to launch its own orbital space station by 2030, using reusable modules designed for the first ISS.

Some ISS structures show age. “It would be a polite way to put on an adult,” Ojha said. “Linking the hardware architecture of the late 1990s to modern laptops and software can pose interesting challenges.”

For the first 15 years the ISS crews focused on assembly and engineering work, which is the science of the microgravity environment that is entering its step.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who returned to Earth last week, gave a press conference on Wednesday about the hundreds of hours she spent in orbit in biological experiments until she began reading DNA on the space station and growing tissues and vegetables in the human heart. “The radishes were delicious,” he said. “We gave them five-star reviews.”

The most important area of ​​ISS research has been the effort to understand the long-term effects of space travel on human health in preparation for planned attempts to colonize the moon or travel to Mars.

The future of the ISS remains to be negotiated after the end of the cooperation agreements in force at the end of 2024. “From a technical point of view, we have cleared the ISS to fly until the end of 2028,” NASA told the Financial Times. “Our analysis does not identify any problems that would prevent it from spreading beyond 2028 if it were to be identified,” although energy and communication systems would have to be upgraded.

Eventually, however, the 440-ton ISS will reach the end of its life and will have to return to Earth. “Deletion is not a trivial matter,” said Martin Rees, Royal Astronomer UK. “It will have to go down in an uninhabited region in the South Pacific.”

Until then the astronaut will continue to organize as it orbits the Earth, but it is already ending an era.