Russia will withdraw from the ISS as soon as 2025

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The space station faces a logitistical "nightmare" if it is to stay operational.

The International Space Station's days may be numbered
The International Space Station's days may be numbered (Image credit: Headspace Studio)

The head of Roscosmos, Russia's state-run space agency, announced Tuesday (July 26) that Russia intends to withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) after its current commitment expires at the end of 2024.

Yuri Borisov, who was appointed head of Roscosmos several weeks ago, made the announcement in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

"The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made," Borisov said. "I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station," he added, referring to a plan to build an exclusively Russian space station called the Russian Orbital Service Station, first proposed in 2021.

"Practically, it could be a nightmare depending on how hard Russia wanted to make it for NASA and its remaining partners," Bimm said.

The ISS consists of two interconnected sections: one run by NASA and the other by Russia. An array of solar panels on the NASA section generates much of the station's power. The Russian section, meanwhile, provides propulsion to periodically push the ISS into a higher orbit and prevent it from falling to Earth. Should Russia withdraw, the remaining partner nations will need to implement some other means of propulsion to keep the ISS safely in orbit.

"The withdrawal will take some time," Pavel Luzin, a Russian military and space analyst, told The New York Times. "Most likely, we need to interpret this as Russia's refusal to extend the station's operation up until 2030."

Earlier this year, NASA announced a new plan for decommissioning the aging space station in January 2031, by allowing the ISS to tumble into a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo. NASA has signed agreements with three private companies to launch several new commercial space stations by the late 2020s.

Originally published on Live Science.

Brandon Specktor
Brandon Specktor
Editor

Brandon is the space / physics editor at Live Science. With more than 20 years of editorial experience, his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and other outlets. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. His interests include black holes, asteroids and comets, and the search for extraterrestrial life.