US expands ISS operations until 2030

NASA will continue to work on the ISS until 2030, despite growing tensions with Russia.

The United States has decided to continue its operations aboard the International Space Station until 2030. NASA recently confirmed this in a blog post. “The International Space Station is a model of peaceful international scientific cooperation and has enabled humanity to achieve tremendous scientific, educational and technological advances over more than 20 years,”Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, said in a statement.

NASA will continue to work on the ISS until 2030

There was never any doubt that the United States would remain committed to the ISS in the short term, but NASA’s announcement comes at a time when tensions with Russia are high enough, one of the many countries with access to the International Space Station. 2021 was also the year that Russia strengthened its space cooperation with China, another adversary of the United States, the New York Times explained last June.

Despite growing tensions with Russia

In the fall of 2021, several warnings appeared on the ISS in which the United States blamed Russia. In October, a sudden fire test on a docked Russian spacecraft deviated the ISS from its normal position, resulting in a brief evacuation of the personnel on board. (Joke: The ship accident originally took place in this area, and the film crew could have filmed the first movie aboard the International Space Station.) Then, in November, a junk satellite forced the ISS astronauts to take shelter on the same day as the Russian missile attack. The United States blamed Russia for the attack. There were no mistakes on the Russian side.

Later that month, in a completely unrelated episode, Russian space agency Roscosmos left the door open to criminal charges, a 2018 incident involving a hole in its spacecraft that Russian media reported was quick to call American sabotage. “These attacks are fictitious and lack any credibility,” Bill Nelson told Ars Techica in November.

In a statement on its blog, NASA highlighted among its current plans to send a man to Mars its Artemis project, which will aim to send the first woman and the first person of color to the moon. Indeed, NASA reorganized in September to accurately reflect its Moon and Mars priorities.