Space
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Negotiations to keep Russia on the International Space Station until 2030, instead of 2025 as originally announced, may be compromised by the war in Ukraine. The Russian space agency wanted instead to tackle the construction of a new lunar station with the Chinese.
From threats to threats, it will eventually become true: Russia continues to hover its abandonment of the International Space Station (ISS) with a new declaration to this effect this weekend. Officially, Moscow wants to pass off this withdrawal as a diplomatic offensive: the Americans would be left alone on board the ISS in response to the sanctions imposed on Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. But in reality, the disengagement of Russia will be very gradual and will more or less join a timetable already established for a long time. The Russians want to build a new space station in collaboration with the Chinese, while the West will manage the end of life of the international station before dropping it in the water in 2031.
What threat does Moscow pose to the ISS?
“The decision is already made, and we are not obliged to speak about it publicly”, launched the director general of the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) on Saturday in an interview on a public television channel, selon Bloomberg. What decision? The one that Dmitry Rogozin had promised to take if the United States and its Western partners did not lift their sanctions against two Russian companies in the space sector – the National Center for Research and Production Progress and Tsniimash. Rogozin recalled that his research center produces the …