by Bernhard at Moon of Alabama
The hostile behavior the ‘west’ is showing towards China and Russia has consequences.
The International Space Station is losing the Russian modules it needs to maneuver. The U.S. will immediately have to build new propulsion modules if it wants to save it.
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Russia has said it will withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 to focus on building its own orbital outpost.Yuri Borisov, who was appointed to lead the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos earlier this month, said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would fulfil its obligations to other partners before it leaves the project.
Mr Borisov said “the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made.”
The U.S. had planned to operate the station until 2031:
Earlier this year NASA published plans for the ISS which could see the 444,615kg structure taken out of orbit in January 2031 and crashed into a “spacecraft cemetery”.It said the laboratory would continue operating until 2030 but its long-term future is unsustainable.
The end date will now likely be earlier than NASA had planned. As an earlier report explained:
Russia provides the propellant and thrusters needed to periodically reboost the station, a critical capability NASA cannot currently replace. Maneuvering is provided by thrusters built into the Russian Zarya and Zvezda modules and aboard visiting Progress supply ships.A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship that arrived earlier this week is the first U.S. vehicle after the space shuttle to be capable of reboost, but it cannot on its own replace the Russian capability.
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NASA astronauts are not trained to operate Russian systems and vice versa for the cosmonauts. Neither side can safely operate the lab on its own.
Without the Russians thruster modules…
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