Russia Wants To Recycle Its Crumbling Half Of The ISS For New Space Station

The days are numbered for the International Space Station as NASA contracted SpaceX to deorbit the 495-ton structure after 2030. However, parts of the station won’t be going on the one-way trip to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A Russian official announced on Friday that the country’s half of the ISS will form the core of the proposed Russian Orbital Station (ROS). The decision immediately raised concerns, considering how poorly the Roscosmos-controlled segment has aged after nearly three decades in orbit. However, recycling equipment might be the only way Russia could afford to maintain an orbital presence.

Roscosmos had ambitious, nationalistic plans for its ISS successor station. ROS was slated to be launched from the relatively new Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, rather than from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. From this launch site, the entirely new station would’ve been slotted in a north-south polar orbit and fly over all of Russia. While Baikonur carries the program’s entire history dating back to the early Soviet space program of the 1950s, the Russian government leases the facility from Kazakhstan, as the two are now separate sovereign nations. However, the push to end foreign dependence on space launches has seemingly been derailed by cost.

All of the initial ROS plans have been scrapped because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has wrecked the country’s economy. Oleg Orlov, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, confirmed that Russia’s ISS segment will form the core of ROS, Ars Technica reports. This switch creates other issues. To use the pre-existing modules, ROS will maintain the same orbit as the ISS, meaning that launches will likely continue from Baikonur. Russia claimed keeping a similar orbit isn’t to save money, but to allow collaboration with a planned Indian space station.

The Russian half of the ISS isn’t in the best of shape. Cosmonauts spend roughly half of their time on the ISS performing maintenance. Before the invasion, Roscosmos lobbied for funding a new station by emphasizing the potential dangers of continuing its ISS involvement. Orlov mentioned that accumulated bacteria and fungi from decades in orbit could be dangerous to cosmonauts and electronics. Admittedly, it’s not entirely a scare tactic. According to NASA, microorganisms will mutate and adapt to survive microgravity, radiation and elevated carbon dioxide levels on the station.

The potential biohazard aside, the Russian modules might not be structurally sound. NASA noted in a meeting with Roscosmos last year that over three pounds of air was leaking from the station through cracks in a vestibule. The vestibule links the Zvezda module and the PrK transfer tunnel. American officials feared that the cracks could lead to a catastrophic failure, risking the lives of everyone onboard. An astronaut even said that NASA keeps the hatch between the two halves shut when the transfer tunnel is open. Maybe Roscosmos will consider its plans before NASA destroys its half of the ISS.