WE NEED SOME SPACE

Russia Says It’s Quitting the International Space Station for Good

The U.S. and Russia jointly launched the ISS in 1998 after four decades of fighting for supremacy in space.

Russia will quit the International Space Station in 2025, marking the end of one of its few successful areas of cooperation with the West. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said that leaving the ISS behind will allow Moscow to launch its own station by 2030. “We are beginning negotiations with our NASA partners, we are formalizing them now,” he said Wednesday, according to the Financial Times. “It does not mean that the station will be scrapped and dumped into the ocean immediately after 2025. We will simply hand over the responsibility for our segment to the partners.” The U.S. and Russia jointly launched the ISS in 1998 after four decades of fighting for supremacy in space. The space agencies of Europe, Japan, and Canada have since provided new modules and astronauts for the station. Earlier this year, Russia and China signed an agreement to jointly build a base on or orbiting the moon.