Russia to exit International Space Station in 2024, build its own

Russia will withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024 after fulfilling all of its obligations to its partners. After exiting the project, Moscow is expected to build its own space outpost. The decision emerged following a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Director General of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov on Tuesday.

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At the start of the meeting, Borisov noted that Russia "opened the way to space for the whole world", but now, according to him, "the industry is in a difficult situation." After that, the head of Roskosmos spoke about plans to create a Russian orbital station.

Borisov told Putin that by the time Russia completed its commitments to its partners in the International Space Station in 2024, work would have already started on a Russian space station. To note, Russia accounts for 17 per cent of the total mass of the International Space Station. The Russian ISS has six modules with ships docked to them.

Earlier this month, NASA had lambasted the Russians for publishing a photo of cosmonauts posing with flags used by Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. NASA had strongly condemned Moscow's use of the International Space Station for political purposes to endorse its war against Ukraine.

However, there were signs of a rapprochement from both sides after Moscow replaced Dmitry Rogozin, who was strongly against the West, with Yuri Borisov as head of its Roscosmos space agency. Shortly after, Roscosmos struck a deal with NASA that would enable American astronauts to hitch a ride to and from the International Space Station on Russian spacecraft and vice versa.

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• Houston
• ISS
• Moscow
• NASA
• Roscosmos
• Russia
• Ukraine war
• United States
• Vladimir Putin