The cost could also rise, because Nasa plans on flying its crew members to the ISS in craft built by Boeing and SpaceX in years to come, meaning they will no longer have pay Roscosmos for Souez seats, leaving Russian Federation without an extra source of income to boost its space budget. This reason for the decision to reduce its crew is deficient budget for the endeavor.
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The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Russia, however, has made noises about breaking with the worldwide partnership no later than 2024, if not earlier, and building its own orbiting station. According to Russian media reports, Sergei Krikalev, the director of human programs for Roscosmos, said the move was made to lower Russia’s ongoing costs to service the station. On contrary, the United States is increasing its supply to the ISS.
It’s a part of NASA’s commercial crew program, where NASA pays private companies to send US astronauts to space. “We will trade it against whatever risk that might put into the program”, he said.
“They’re exploring the option of going down to two crew on the Russian segment,”said ISS operations integration manager Kenneth Todd, responding to a question from collectSPACE.com editor Robert Pearlman”. The ISS partners would try to figure out the matter, they would either try to find a way to find a solution or would reject the proposal. Initially there were only two modules, but now r number of modules has climbed to 15.
The four-year difference has caused experts to express concern over the future of the ISS, though both NASA and Roscosmos have previously pledged to work together on the space station’s future replacement.
The proposal comes at a time of financial hardship for Roscosmos, which was recently given a ten-year budget of about $20.5 billion-barely more than NASA receives in a single year.
The Russian plan would go into effect no earlier than 2017, Interfax reported.
While this may sound like a lot, it’s not much more than the Nasa’s annual repairs and transport bill, according to Ars Technica.
In a statement on Monday, NASA confirmed that Russian Federation is considering dropping back to two crew members. However, the agency did not provide any additional information.
Russian Federation is considering lowering its International Space Station cosmonaut crew complement from three to two.
Typically, six crew members live at the orbiting outpost.
Rubins and Williams will conduct a spacewalk on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016, to install the first International Docking Adapter (IDA), the new docking port that will enable the future arrival of US commercial crew spacecraft.
From two modules the space station has grown to 15, occupying a space the size of an American football field and representing around $100bn in investment.
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Since the turn of the millennium, the ISS has been occupied by a rotating crew of astronauts and cosmonauts who typically spend six months aboard.
