Russia has announced that it will be leaving the International Space Station "after 2024", amid tensions with the West, in a move analysts warned could lead to a halt to manned flights.
The confirmation of the long-mooted move came on Tuesday as ties unravel between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of devastating sanctions against Russia, including its space sector.
Space experts said the departure from the International Space Station would seriously affect the country's space sector and deal a major blow to the programme of manned flights, a major source of Russian pride.
"Of course we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made," Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.
"I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station," Borisov added, calling it the domestic space programme's main "priority". "Good," Putin replied.
Washington has not received "any official word" from Russia yet, Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS for US space agency NASA, said during a conference on the outpost. Asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: "No, absolutely not."
Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.
Manned flights 'at stake'
The ISS, launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War, is due to be retired after 2024, although NASA says it can remain operational until 2030.
Russia is heavily reliant on imports of everything from manufacturing equipment to consumer goods and the effects of Western sanctions are expected to wreak havoc on the country's economy in the long term.
Space expert Vadim Lukashevich said space science cannot flourish in a heavily-sanctioned country.
"If the ISS ceases to exist in 2024, we will have nowhere to fly," Lukashevich said. "At stake is the very preservation of manned flights in Russia, the birthplace of cosmonautics."
Space analyst Vitaly Yegorov stressed it was next to impossible to build a new orbiting station from scratch in a few years, saying "Neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026 will there be a Russian orbital station."
He added that creating a full-fledged space station would take at least a decade of "the most generous funding".
Yegorov said Russia's departure from the ISS meant Moscow might have to put on ice its programme of manned flights "for several years" or even "indefinitely".
Source: AFP
