The International Space Station (ISS) is a project between five participating space agencies, including NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos. Sanctions imposed by the US on the space sector had been hindering satellite launches from Russia. As a result, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, suggested that Moscow would withdraw from the ISS in 2025 if the sanctions aren’t lifted, according to Yahoo! News.
“We have more than enough rockets but nothing to launch them with,” Rogozin said.
“We have spacecraft that are nearly assembled but they lack one specific microchip set that we have no way of purchasing because of the sanctions.”
If we take a look at the recent sanctions from the US that Moscow had to face, they were made over election meddling, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, and cyber attacks. However, Moscow denies all these allegations.
Cost: $150 billion
The total cost for the International Space Station is about $150 billion. The station orbits around the Earth at the height of 408 km, and it has a fabulous speed on the orbit of 7.66 km per second. The launch occurred in November 1998. The ISS is the ninth space station that became inhabited by crews, following the Soviet, as well as later Russian Almaz, Salyut, and Mir stations and the Skylab from the US. The ISS is the largest satellite from low Earth orbit, and you can easily spot it in the sky with the naked eye.
The International Space Station regularly appears as the brightest object on the night sky after the Moon, which means that spotting it is child play. The other participating space agencies besides NASA and Roscosmos for the ISS project are JAXA from Japan, ESA from Europe, and CSA from Canada.
