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Russia Changes its Mind on ISS Shutdown in 2020

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 25, 2014
Filed under ,

Russia may carry on ISS project after 2020 – newspaper, Interfax
“If we take a look at the relevant section of the federal space program, we will see that the Russian Academy of Sciences is the ISS project customer. Our American partners have said many times they wished to continue the ISS operations after 2020. When they heard our leaders saying that Russia wanted to close down the project in 2020, they fostered the interaction with scientists and made interesting propositions of works in the period after 2020. A yearlong mission of a U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS is scheduled for 2015,” the Roscosmos source told Izvestia. He said the Americans had offered the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences to arrange another yearlong mission experiment. “Meanwhile, Roscosmos is not very interested in halting the ISS works right now: the federal space program of 2006-2015 allots 186.6 billion rubles for the station. If we stop building new modules of the station, considerable funds will be written off and some enterprises will have to start massive dismissals,” he added.”
Russia Shuts Off RD-180 & GPS Stations; Cancels ISS post-2020, earlier post
Who Is Actually In Charge of the Space Station?, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

17 responses to “Russia Changes its Mind on ISS Shutdown in 2020”

  1. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    I couldn’t care less whether the Russians remain ISS partners after 2020. The other partners will be able to carry the load just fine by then: cargo and crew transport, station orbit boosting and no shortage of willing astronauts.

    Just leave the Zarya and Zvezda operations manuals where we can find them.

    tinker

    • John Thomas says:
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      And how do you propose we re-fuel it so they can maintain the ISS orbit altitude?

      • Brian says:
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        Propulsion Modules based on Cygnus. Don’t bother refueling, just replace as needed.

        • John Gardi says:
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          Brian:

          Exactly, just like the ATV is doing right now, acting as a propulsion module. Cygnus or Dragon would make fine propulsion modules (and Dragon would naturally be reusable too).

          tinker

          • windbourne says:
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            I would rather see NASA open up a contract to private space for them to build a tug and provide that service. Ideally, that tug could be later attached to say a BA-330 to move around in LEO with cargo and passengers.

        • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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          To permit a US vehicle to act as a propulsion module the docking mechanism on either the ISS or the visiting vehicle will need changing or both.

    • Jeff Smith says:
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      Europe is so bored with ISS that they didn’t even want to send the last ATV to the station. They’d rather build a service module for Orion. Where do you think their priorities REALLY are? Now, the US likely can maintain the station solo by 2020, but no one besides China is proposing new stations (Russia doesn’t have the rubles). I think the political winds have blown through the “station fad” are moving on to new space fads.
      (Btw, I don’t think stations are fads, or any of the other projects. It just seems that for the governments with space programs: China, Japan, Canada, Europe, Russia, etc., that they want to do a moon program this decade, then a station program next decade, then a mars program, then a spaceplane program, and then restart the cycle all over again)

    • windbourne says:
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      If Russia leaves, they will take their modules and manuals as well. And IMHO, I say good.
      It will force us to increase life support, a tug to move it, and very likely add a BA unit or two.

      However, with that said, it is better to have Russia as a partner, as opposed to not.

    • Anonymous says:
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      I’m sure commercial U.S. companies do “care” ISS continues orbiting as much as the Russians for the CR$ contracts. No American reboost capability either, unless the ISS Interim Control Module from the late 1990s is adapted.

  2. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    I hope the Russians decide to keep the ISS after 2020.

  3. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    No great surprise really. Since they dropped the cis-Lunar tourist flight the Russian HSF program is ISS and nothing else; they know it too.

    Roscosmos doesn’t have the capability to replace ISS as a destination. No matter how much Zhirinovsky and the other ultra-nationalists keep on screeching about ‘Mir-2’, that won’t change unless there is a major re-prioritisation of HSF by the Russian government and I don’t see that happening.

    • jamesmuncy says:
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      It’s a minor footnote of history that when the raw structure of Zvezda was sitting on the factory floor at Krunichev, before being moved to Energia (where most of the work was done)… it had a sign in front of it which translated as “Mir 2”. This was not amusing to a U.S. congressional delegation, which saw this “truth in labelling” as proof that the Russian government wasn’t exactly keeping their promise to fund completion of the Service Module.

      • John Gardi says:
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        James:

        Not only that, but Zvezda is the oldest module by far, with it’s ‘keel’ laid down in 1982! It even spent some time in the USA as a training simulator for the Shuttle/MIR program (I’m pretty sure is was that particular service module anyway).

        tinker

  4. Jeff Havens says:
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    It’s all about the money, money, money….

  5. Vladislaw says:
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    So it’s a jobs program in russian political districts same as here. A lot of people were commenting that the Station would keep going regardless of the current talking smack. They would not have a station to fly to by 2020 unless funding for it was being allocated now. Nothing in the new russian space budget for a new station.

  6. John Thomas says:
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    For those that asked what NASA was going to do and why NASA wasn’t publicly beginning post-Russian plans, this is why.

  7. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    The quickest way for Russia to get its own spacestation is to buy an Almaz back off Excalibur Almaz. This assumes the upgrades work.