Vladimir Putin is determined to launch Russia's own space station. The President of Russia shared an update about it in a meeting last week.
Vladimir Putin Provides Update on Russia's Space Station
When the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that it would leave the International Space Station (ISS), it pledged to construct its own orbital station. Putin gave an update about Russia's space station last week.
"As the ISS's resources deplete, we need to bring the full station into service, not just one portion," Putin said when he visited a rocket corporation in Korolyov, a city outside of Moscow. "And in 2027, the first segment should be placed in orbit."
Since its launch in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) has served as a representation of global cooperation and diplomacy, but after the conflict in Ukraine mainly cut off Russia from the West, it announced its departure from the project.
Yuri Borisov, the head of Roscosmos, warned that if Russia wants to stay competitive, it must launch its station swiftly. This includes a combined initiative by the US, European, Canadian, and Japanese space agencies.
Per Borisov, the ISS is getting old and is expected to halt its operation sometime in 2030. He noted that Russia has to start its large-scale work for its orbital station next year; otherwise, they will lose capability due to the time gap.
Only the International Space Station and China's Tiangong Space Station are currently in orbit. As the cost of going into space continues to drop, private companies are eager to develop their own.
Russia is also determined with its moon landing program, despite the failed Luna-25 mission in August. Days before its expected lunar landing, Russia lost communication with the robotic spacecraft. The country tried to contact the device to no avail.
International Space Station To End Operation in 2031
The enormous spacecraft will have been in orbit around our planet for 25 years in November. In addition to the hundreds of astronauts who have lived there temporarily for a quarter of a century, other visitors have included frogs, worms, shellfish, and butterflies. Each of these visitors was the focus of experiments to learn more about how weightlessness, radiation, and other extraterrestrial phenomena affect living things. Additionally, astronauts have investigated dark matter, cosmic rays, and the ozone layers of Earth.
However, the days of this 100-meter-long monster, whose first component, Russia's Zarya module, was launched into orbit on November 20, 1998, are now numbered. The station has already been functioning for ten years longer than anticipated, and while it travels around the Earth at 17,500 mph and is heated and cooled 16 times per day, it experiences an increasing number of air leaks, thruster failures, and other problems. These problems are made worse by the spaceship's aging, almost obsolete electronics as well as vibrations from crew movements and spaceship dockings.
Because of this, NASA has decided that the International Space Station (ISS), which now consists of 16 pressurized modules, will be shut down and sent spiraling into the Pacific Ocean in 2031. The space agency maintains that there will be very little risk to humanity from the 400-ton craft colliding with our planet.
Not everyone was impressed with the existence of ISS. Late US Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg was seemingly against it. According to him, the only real technology ISS produced is regarding keeping humans alive in space, which he found senseless and a circular process if one acknowledges the idea that there's no point in having humans in space.
UK Astronomer Royal Martin Rees seemingly shares the same sentiment. He noted that ISS only makes headlines when its toilets stop working or when an astronaut floats with a guitar singing "Space Oddity."
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