End of an era for the International Space Station, as Russia looks east

The International Space Station, the world’s largest collaboration in science and engineering, has been a cosmopolitan meeting point for astronauts for two decades.

Just this month, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts into the laboratory orbiting 420 km above the Earth’s surface on April 9th. Eight days later, another Soyuz rocket brought a different American-Russian trio to Earth and on Friday to the United States SpaceX spacecraft took two more Americans into orbit, a Japanese and a French; his Dragon capsule will dock on Saturday with the 23-year-old station.

So varied come and go, however, it is over. Russia announced this week that it will withdraw from the $ 150 billion ISS in 2025, ending a remarkable period of international cooperation dating back to its planning in the perestroika period at the end of the Cold War.

Despite rising tensions between Russia and the US over the past decade, space agencies in the two countries have continued to work closely with their European, Japanese and Canadian counterparts. According to NASA, 243 people from 19 countries have visited the ISS since 2000.

“Although there were some difficulties in the early days because the Russian and American space agencies had very different forms of work, we have reached a degree of operational maturity, so in terms of crew dynamics, I have only heard things positives about astronauts and cosmonauts working together, ”said Professor Anu Ojha, director of the UK National Space Academy and advisor to the European Space Agency.

During the early years of the construction of ISS modules and their assembly into 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 experience,” Ojha said. “The Russians were the masters of building modular space stations.”

Western teams, meanwhile, needed Russian rockets to transport materials and people to and from the ISS. That reliance increased when NASA withdrew the space shuttle in 2011, leaving Soyuz as the only passenger vehicle available to take astronauts into orbit, a pride for Russia that ended last year when NASA began using Elon Musk’s SpaceX system.

For Roscosmos, the Russian space agency without cash, the collaboration of the ISS has meant much-needed access to Western funding. NASA spent $ 3.9 billion on Soyuz seats to transport astronauts to the ISS between 2011 and 2019 after the Shuttle was withdrawn, according to the agency’s inspector general, Paul Martin.

While astronaut Mark Vande Hei’s trip to the ISS this month may not be the last of an American on a Russian rocket, the vast majority of non-Russian astronauts will travel with either SpaceX or the delayed Starliner rocket. of Boeing, which is expected to enter service next year.

For Russia, the decision to end participation with the ISS is expected to lead to further space collaboration with China, which is part of a broader pivot toward Beijing by the Kremlin.

Since Western sanctions were first imposed on Moscow in response to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, which cut off some trade and financial channels, Russia has redoubled its efforts to increase ties with China. Countries have signed defense agreements and energy ties, while bilateral trade nearly doubled from 2010 to $ 110 billion in 2019.

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

The thorny rhetoric of Moscow and Washington has increased in recent years, with each claiming that the other sought to militarize space. Last July, the United States accused Russia of firing a projectile from one of its satellites in an alleged gun test, while Moscow said the US “openly considers space to be a military theater.” .

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 a lunar base to “promote peaceful exploration and the use of space for all humanity,” according to the memorandum of understanding.

The Russian space agency also said Wednesday that it aimed to launch its own orbital space station in 2030, using reused modules designed by ISS.

Some ISS structures show their age. “Maturity would be a polite way of saying it,” Ojha said. “The interface of late 1990s hardware architecture with modern laptops and software can present interesting challenges.”

For the first 15 years, ISS teams focused on assembly and engineering work, meaning that science in the microgravity environment is just advancing.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who returned to Earth last week, told a news conference Wednesday about the hundreds of hours she had spent in orbit in biology experiments ranging from reading the ‘DNA in the space station to the growth of heart tissues and human vegetables. “The radishes were delicious,” he said. “We gave them five-star reviews.”

The ISS’s most important research area has been understanding 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 after the end of the current collaboration agreements at the end of 2024 has yet to be negotiated. “From a technical standpoint, we have authorized the ISS to fly until the end of 2028,” NASA told the Financial Times. “Our analysis has not identified any issues that prevent us from expanding beyond 2028 if necessary,” although energy and communications systems would need to be updated.

Eventually, however, the 440-ton ISS will reach the end of its life and will have to be returned to Earth. “Removing it is not a trivial matter,” said Martin Rees, a real UK astronomer. “It will have to fall in an uninhabited region of the South Pacific.”

Until then, it will continue to host astronauts as it orbits the Earth, but an era is coming to an end.