Russia has formally notified its International Space Station partners that it will continue in the partnership at least to 2024, ending several months of doubts that were fueled by the current poor state of Russia’s relations with the West.
The 22-nation European Space Agency confirmed that the Russia space agency, Roscosmos, had notified ESA and the other partners of its commitment to 2024, a decision that followed similar guarantees by NASA – the station’s general contractor – and the Canadian Space Agency.
That leaves ESA and the Japanese space agency, JAXA, as the only two current partners yet to make a decision. ESA has yet to commit even to 2020 but expects to do so at a meeting of its member governments in late 2016.
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Much like the Tu-160 line restart is for the PAK-DA bomber, this announcement is a really, really bad sign for an independent Russian space station. I suspect we will not hear about the independent space station for some time. The only other way the Russians might do another space station outside of the ISS is with the Chinese. However, like the ISS being bankrolled by America by and large, so too the other space station would be by China.
Much like the Tu-160 line restart is for the PAK-DA bomber, this announcement is a really, really bad sign for an independent Russian space station. I suspect we will not hear about the independent space station for some time. The only other way the Russians might do another space station outside of the ISS is with the Chinese. However, like the ISS being bankrolled by America by and large, so too the other space station would be by China.
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