Moscow. January 25. INTERFAX - The United States is leaning towards the option of flooding the International Space Station (ISS) after the completion of its operation and has asked Russia to calculate options for station data from orbit, said the flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS Vladimir Solovyov.
"We need to think about creating a new space station and completing it with the International Space Station. Having experience in completing work with Mir, I can say: this is a rather difficult ballistic flooding task. The Americans immediately said: "Vladimir, we are thumping into your legs, let's think under the leadership of Russia how we will take it (ISS - IF) out of orbit." Not immediately, of course, but closer to 2028-2030," Solovyov said in an interview with the Roscosmos TV YouTube channel.
Solovyov noted that NASA for the first time seriously talked about the prospect of flooding the station only in 2021.
"They used to say, come on, it will fly forever. Now they are already saying: it will not fly forever, we need to think about what will happen next," Solovyov said.
On April 21, 2021, Solovyov announced that Russia does not plan to undock and flood its segment of the ISS, negotiations are underway with partners on the "civilized" completion of work at the station. According to him, the Russian segment of the ISS has reworked its resource by one and a half times.
On August 24 last year, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said that Russia, in case of withdrawal from the ISS project, would not abandon its obligations to organize the flooding of the station when its resource is exhausted. According to him, by agreement with partners, it is the Russian side that will have to ensure the flooding of the station at the end of its operation.
"It should be borne in mind that the ISS dodges space debris and compensates for its orbit solely at the expense of Russian Progress spacecraft. One of them docked to the station today. And when the time comes, and the station will work out its resource, then it is the Russian ships that will have to flood it at a certain point in the ocean," he said.
