After briefly making statements alluding to the possibility of withdrawing from involvement on the International Space Station (ISS), Russia is likely to remain there.
Earlier this year, media outlets quoted the head of Russia's national space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, as saying they planned to leave the football field-sized orbiting laboratory they built on the ISS in 1998.
The reason? As quoted from CNN, the country reportedly wants to start building its own space station to be launched into orbit in 2030.
"We are starting negotiations with our partner, NASA. We are making it official now. It doesn't mean the station will be dumped and fall into the sea after 2025," Rogozin said at the time.
But as months have passed since that statement was made public, it seems Russia has changed its mind. "This issue is like a family where divorce within the ISS is impossible," said Rogozin.
He also said there was confusion regarding Russia's status on the ISS in interpreting this issue, so that a statement appeared indicating plans to leave.
"I think there's a problem of interpretation. I most likely didn't say that. We talked about how to continue our friendship, our friendly relationship with our US partners when their governments imposed sanctions on the same organization that supplies the ISS," he explained.
If Russia did leave the ISS, this would mark the end of more than two decades of Russian-US cooperation on the ISS. The ISS operates outside the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement, which is an international agreement signed in the late 90s by the 15 governments involved in the project.
By leaving the space station, Russia would withdraw from the treaty and simply abandon its own orbiting laboratory. This of course will place a burden on the operations of the ISS.
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