Russia will “undock” from the ISS – Kommersant FM – Kommersant
Russia has decided to withdraw from the ISS project after 2024. As the next chairman of Roskosmos, Yuri Borisov, declared, the creation of the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS) is a priority for the state corporation. Back in June, the former head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said that the continuation of the operation of the ISS is possible only if the American fall in the space environment is excluded.
What is the exit of state corporations from the project to Russian and international cosmonautics? And how realistic are the plans for a possible own station? Kommersant FM discussed these issues with Deeptech Partners Managing Partner Nikita Veliyev:
“According to the rather complicated reception of such statements. One can consider an absolutely radical scenario – that Russia will cease to gather at the ISS in any way at all, but then the station simply cannot exist. It will be necessary to drown with joint loads, because our segment captures most of the system requests. Perhaps this scenario provides that Russia as a state will withdraw from the project, but the inclusion of the corporation will not work.
Then it will be able to perform some of its functions, for example, to maneuver, and the United States, as the task of the country that uses the ISS, can, according to its statement, continue using the station until 2030. But this will significantly reduce the scientific part of Russia in the field of the ISS.
For international atmospheric observations, this is an unpleasant story, both in the first and in the second scenario, because after all this is a joint international project, a large scientific base has been built there.
We understand that now everything is moving towards a rollback of globalization. Such statements are primarily provoked by the desire of Roskosmos and Energia to build their own space station. For Russia, this is also not the most pleasant event from the point of view of science, because if it drags on, there will be some difficulties with building its own space station, this will result in the loss of a good scientific block in the space industry, because the ISS accounts for a fairly large amount of research “.
Roscosmos expects that the first modules of the Russian station will be launched into orbit at the end of 2025. According to other sources, it can only be in 2027. At the same time, the project of the entire space object is still at the development stage – RSC Energia has been engaged in it since May, which received a state contract in the amount of 2.7 billion rubles. The plan is to finish the drawing by the end of March 2024, and start construction no earlier than 2028. According to the popularizer of astronautics, blogger Vitaly Egorov, this practically means the launch of this station.
“What they call the first module of the ROSS station is actually a scientific and energy module, which, according to the preliminary plan, was supposed to fly to the International Space Station before 2015. This is already a long-term construction, which for 10 years is not in the state in which it should be. Of course, it is possible to launch, but whether it will cope with its task as the base unit of the space station is a more complicated question.
The NEM module is not built as a base unit, it does not fit that there will be, for example, cosmonauts’ cabins, a toilet, but in space this is, in general, an important thing. For the version of the game and returning it back to earth is a technical possibility.
The station was created for the most part in the Soviet Union, and the NEM was supposed to be the first full-fledged station module designed and manufactured in Russia.
Based on it, a few more pieces could be made.
But since the first NEM has not yet been completed, and it is not clear when it will fly, it is too early to say when we will be able to do all the others. Everything comes down to money. With sufficiently stable funding for, for example, 10 years, I think Roskosmos would have implemented such a project even in the conditions of a decision. If it is very rough to estimate whether it will be from half to 1 trillion.
Roskosmos on its own Telegram channel published an approximate deployment scheme for the nearest orbital station. The illustration indicates that they plan to launch it from the Vostochny cosmodrome. And RSC Energia said that the first crew on the ROSS project will be sent in 2028 from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
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