MOSCOW, April 11. /TASS/. The procedure of dumping the International Space Station (ISS) will take more than 12 months if a corresponding decision is made, Head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily posted on its website on Monday.
"Why must a technical solution be necessarily linked with the undocking? It won’t be necessary to undock the station, if it is to be dumped. It will simply have to be de-orbited safely with the help of braking thrusters. This is also not quick work. The procedure will take more than twelve months as our ballistics specialists and Chief Designer for Manned Cosmonautics Vladimir Alekseyevich Solovyov told me. In its time, the controlled dumping of the Mir station became one of the most unique technical operations in the entire history of world cosmonautics," the Roscosmos chief said.
Now Russia has to set up its mind about the year until which it cooperates on the ISS project, Rogozin said. "Yes, the Americans want it [cooperation] to last until 2030. The previous talks said that it would be until 2028. But let me repeat again that we have to decide on the main thing: to continue cooperation on the ISS or switch to the ROSS [Russian Orbital Service Station]. Subsequently, we will decide on what to do with our two new modules on the ISS that we docked last year," Rogozin said.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov announced in April 2021 that the condition of the International Space Station (ISS) left much to be desired and Russia might focus on creating its own orbital outpost. Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation was assigned the task of making the first basic module for a new Russian orbital station ready in 2025. The new module will be based on a research and power unit that was previously intended for launch to the International Space Station in 2024.
The Roscosmos Scientific and Technical Council recommended that the work on creating the technical project of Russia’s new orbital station be included in the 2025 federal space program. In late February this year, the Roscosmos chief said that it would be hard to simultaneously implement the ISS project and the project of building a new national orbital outpost due to financial constraints. He also said it was necessary to stipulate some "overlapping period" when the ISS and the ROSS would operate simultaneously for some time.