The country will no longer work with partners such as NASA and the European Space Agency in the floating laboratory, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said on social media. He said a timetable for completing the joint work would be submitted to the Russian leadership. The ISS is the last major space project in which Russia is working with these cooperating space services, after other launches and operations were canceled in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, it remains arguably the most important, as it hosts several astronauts and its orbit must be constantly maintained to prevent it from falling to Earth. Mr Rogozin, for example, has threatened sanctions that could disrupt the project and cause the station to “fall into the sea or land”. For the time being, however, the space services working on the station have largely continued to operate normally throughout the war on the ground. Russia safely bought NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei back to Earth last week, for example – despite proposals that could be rejected – and work continued on the ISS and its orbit. In March, however, Mr Rogozin appealed to space agencies around the world to lift sanctions on companies in Russia’s space and space industries to ensure that work on the ISS would continue. He imposed a deadline at the end of the month. They responded without any indication that these sanctions would be lifted, but with a commitment to continue work on the space station. “The position of our partners is clear: sanctions will not be lifted,” Rogozin wrote on Twitter. “At the same time, fearing the collapse of cooperation in the ISS, where Russia’s role is crucial in ensuring the viability and safety of the station, Western partners are making it clear that in fact will work. “I consider this situation unacceptable. “Sanctions by the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan are intended to impede the financial, economic and productive activities of our high-tech enterprises.” He went on to say that sanctions are so important that co-operation will not be considered possible for as long as they are in force. “I believe that the restoration of normal relations between the partners of the International Space Station and other joint projects is possible only with the complete and unconditional lifting of illegal sanctions,” he concluded. “Specific proposals of Roskosmos for the timetable for the completion of the cooperation within the ISS with the space services of the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan will be reported to the leadership of our country in the near future.”
