Russia’s space chief said Thursday that the International Space Station (ISS) is dangerous and not good for its purpose. This comes as Moscow moves forward with plans to leave the project and launch its own station.
The head of the Roscosmos agency, Yuri Borisov, said that broken equipment and old parts were putting the crew’s safety at risk on the 24-year-old station.
Even though relations between the US and Russia were getting worse, the ISS was one area where they worked together.
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But since Russia invaded Ukraine in February and got hit with a lot of sanctions from the West, it wants to leave and launch its own space station after 2024 even more.
“From a technical point of view, all of the ISS’s warranty periods have passed. This is unsafe,” Borisov said. “A process of equipment breaking down like an avalanche is starting, and cracks are showing.”
He said that Russia’s space station would go around the Earth’s poles. This would let it look down on a lot more of Russia’s huge land area and collect new information about cosmic radiation.
The ISS was built in 1998 and has been occupied continuously since November 2000. Canada, Japan, and 11 European countries work with the United States and Russia to run the station. NASA, which is part of the U.S. government, wants to keep it running until 2030.
Borisov showed off a model of Russia’s planned station last month. On Thursday, he said that “friendly countries” could work together on the project.
Borisov, who used to be a deputy prime minister and has a background in defence, said that Western sanctions on Russia’s space industry had made it impossible for the two countries to work together in the future.
He pointed to the European Space Agency’s decision to stop working with Russia on the ExoMars rover, which will look for life on Mars by the end of the decade.
“A lot of work and a lot of money went into it, but then politics got in the way, and what happened? “This shouldn’t be the way it is,” Borisov said.
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Now, Moscow wants to work with China and other “friendly countries.”
Borisov said that Russia was “looking at how to work with our closest partners, first and foremost China,” so that they could work together to explore the moon and deep space.
