NASA has announced that Russia will remain on the International Space Station (ISS) until 2028. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has confirmed its continued presence until that year. This marks a reversal from the departure announced by its previous head, Dmitry Rogozin, who stated that Russia would leave the facility at some point after 2024. Other ISS partners, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), Canada, and Japan’s JAXA space agency, have signed on until 2030.
The ISS is preparing for decommissioning and disintegration in our atmosphere in early 2031, at which time its remains will fall into Point Nemo, the area known as the South Pacific spacecraft graveyard. There it will rest alongside hundreds of spacecraft wrecks, including the Russian space station MIR.
The then-head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, began using Twitter as his own battleground last year, shortly after the start of Ukraine’s invasion of Russia. Rogozin even suggested leaving a NASA astronaut stranded on the space station just as SpaceX’s Crew Dragons began operating. Eventually, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed Rogozin, and Yuri Borisov became the new head of the Russian space agency.
Despite the problems, Roscosmos has signed agreements with NASA to ensure that all transports always have Russian astronauts on board. In addition, President Putin announced this month his intention to return to the moon and beyond. It seems that the collaboration with China to create a lunar station to orbit our satellite, a preliminary step to bring people back to the surface of our neighbor, is still on the table. In short, Russia seems to be willing to cooperate in space, at least for now.