n a historic decision, US space agency NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos have decided to work together to build a new space station, ISS 2.0, once the current International Space Station’s funding runs out in the year 2024. Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said on Saturday:
“We have agreed that Roscosmos and NASA will be working together on the program of a future space station.”
It should be noted that earlier this year, Russia announced its plans to quit the ISS, the best example of Russia-US cooperation, by the year 2020. Later Roscosmos threatened the US to use its modules of ISS to build its own space station platform after 2014.
Keeping in mind the above-mentioned tension and uncertainty, the plans of working together on ISS 2.0 are relieving for the space fraternity. This announcement was made at the press conference at the occasion of US-Russian crew’s record setting flight to ISS stretched over a time period of one year.
In addition to this future ISS 2.0 collaboration, NASA and Russia will be working on a joint Mars mission. NASA chief Charles Bolden said:
“Our area of cooperation will be Mars. We are discussing how best to use the resources, the finance, we are setting time frames and distributing efforts in order to avoid duplication.”
The current ISS is a lot more than an orbiting lab, It has served as an ideal platform for technological research and developments. It has been a place for 100 Russian launches, 37 US space shuttle launches and more
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