Russia Is Staying on the ISS Through 2028

Russia is staying on the International Space Station, after all.

Russian space officials have recently announced that Roscosmos will support "continued operations" on the ISS past its intended date to leave the ISS for a few more years, at least.

Russia previously mentioned it intends to leave the ISS to launch and operate its own space station after 2024.

Russia's Plans For The ISS

NASA mentioned in its recent statement that Russia has confirmed it will support continued operations on the ISS through 2028, though it didn't say anything about the country's reason why it decided to stay.

You may remember that Russia previously announced it had decided to withdraw from the ISS after 2024 to focus on putting up its own space station, during the middle of Moscow and the West's tension due to the conflict in Ukraine.

In an earlier report, Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov said that Russia would be ending its work on the ISS due to the various sanctions placed on it following the conflict in Ukraine, saying that normal relations between Russia and the West are only possible through "the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions."

Russia isn't the only country signing on to continue operations on the ISS. Japan, Canada, and the participating countries of the European Space Agency (ESA) have also confirmed their continued support of ISS operations through 2030.

The US has also announced its support of continued operations at the ISS through 2030. Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that extending its time aboard the ISS allows the US to "reap the benefits of more than two decades of experiments and technology demonstrations," and to continue materializing even greater discovery to come.

The move to continue supporting operations past 2030 is surprising for NASA and the other countries who wish to do the same. The space agency is planning on retiring or decommissioning the ISS by 2030 by commanding it to crash into the Pacific Ocean's spacecraft cemetery, letting it burn up in Earth's atmosphere and crashing it in the process.

ISS History

The ISS is the love child between NASA, Roscosmos, the ESA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Due to this collaboration, the ISS is not owned by one single nation, per the European Space Agency (ESA).

A total of 19 countries have visited the ISS, which resulted in a total of 244 individuals visiting it as of April 2021, according to Space.com.

However, NASA and Roscosmos were the first to collaborate to establish the foundation of what would become the ISS. According to the ISS National Laboratory, Russia linked two Soyuz vehicles in space to create the first rudimentary station in 1969, while the US linked their separate space station plans and merged the resulting spacecraft to Russia's in 1993 to form a single facility in 1998, per the Encyclopedia Britannica.