What's next for the International Space Station?
Russia's announcement this week that it will leave the International Space Station "after 2024" raises critical questions about the outpost's future viability.
Here's what you should know about Moscow's decision, and the potential effect on one of the last remaining examples of US-Russia cooperation.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pitted it against the West, eviscerating its relationship with the United States and leading to broad sanctions, including against its space industry.
Back in March, Dmitry Rogozin, then-chief of Russian space agency Roscosmos, warned that without his nation's cooperation, the ISS could plummet to Earth on US or European territory.
But Rogozin's penchant for bombast, combined with a lack of a firm plan, left things uncertain -- and just two weeks ago, Russia and the United States vowed to continue flying each other's cosmonauts and astronauts to the station.
Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said that if anything, the new announcement by Rogozin's successor Yury Borisov was "mildly helpful."
"The fact they said, 'We're going to be committed through 2024' is good," Pace, a former high-ranking government official, told AFP.
It means Moscow isn't planning to pull out sooner, even though what precisely is meant by "after 2024" isn't yet clear.
The year 2024 is what the partners had previously agreed to, though NASA's goal is to keep the ISS in orbit until at least 2030 and then transition to smaller commercial stations.
The next step in the process is to notify a body called the multilateral control board, comprising all the ISS partners -- the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada -- at which point details of the transition will be defined.
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