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This is Baikonur, Kazakhstan on a cold winter's morning in 1998. On this day, the world’s
most expensive and impressive engineering project came to life. This is of course the first module
of the International Space Station being launched into orbit. Over the next decade, the Americans
and the Russians grew the ISS to be the size of an entire football field. Since the year 2000,
it’s had a constant presence of humans, living and working onboard the station. Not only has it been
an incredible engineering achievement, but the fact that America and Russia have worked together
so closely is almost even more incredible. But it seems like that collaboration could
be coming to an end. Russia has announced that it plans to leave the ISS after the year 2024.
Before we go into how this will affect the space station, we need to talk about this guy,
Dmitry Rogozin. This man was the head of the Russian space agency for the last 4 years,
but he’s more well known for his humorous tweets. He’s the one who threatened to detach the Russian
part of the space station and crash it into America. In a rage of insecurity,
he also covered up all of the international flags on one of his Russian rockets.
So obviously the Russian space program has been in good hands for the last few years. But just
recently, Dmitry was fired and replaced by a man named Yuri Borisov. After only being in the job
for a matter of weeks, he announced the big news that Russia would be saying goodbye to the ISS
and starting its own space station. But according to him, this had nothing to do with politics.
All joking aside, this isn’t actually all that surprising. The ISS is now over two decades old,
and as the tech on board gets even older, it will only cause more and more problems. One of the
reasons that Russia wants to leave is that they are spending more time fixing things than actually
performing experiments. Since it’s so expensive to send things up to the ISS, it’s not very often
that things get updated. The main computers on the ISS are from 1988 and have less processing power
than the original PlayStation. But it’s not as easy as just sending the latest Macbook up there.
In order for computer components to work well in space they have to be radiation hardened.
This is a lengthy process that involves years of customizing each electrical component, protecting
them from the intense radiation that hits the ISS every day. It can take years just to certify that
a laptop is ready to survive in space, and by that time it’s already well out of date.
Of course, NASA also sends regular laptops and iPads up there, but they are expected to
fail. In fact, there are over 100 laptops on the ISS and most of them don’t work. Imagine
there being some kind of dungeon with piles of old ThinkPads stacked on top of eachother.
Either way, the ISS is old and if Russia wants to move on and start its own space station, then let
them do it. But it’s not so easy. After all, it’s called the International Space Station, and every
member plays its role in keeping it running. The US provides the Russian segment with all of its
power and most of its communications too. This section here is the Russian segment and contains
various thrusters that are used to steer the space station. One of the most important tasks these
thrusters need to carry out is re-boosting the station. You see, although the ISS is in space,
there are still tiny traces of atmosphere at this altitude, which slow the station down and
lower its orbit. Because of this, the station can lose up to 100 meters in altitude every
single day. If nothing was done about this, the space station would sink lower and lower, before
eventually burning up in the atmosphere. The way they avoid this is by firing up the thrusters
on the Russian segment about once a month to accelerate the station and increase its altitude.
This process can be seen in this video where astronauts slowly start to float down the station
as the thrusters are firing. In reality, we’re actually seeing the station move around the
astronauts. If Russia took away its segment, the space station would have no way of raising its
altitude or avoiding debris impacts. It would also cause problems when it came time to retire
the ISS, since it wouldn’t have the control to carefully deorbit into a safe part of the Ocean.
Another possible scenario is that the Russians save the hassle of detaching their segment and
leave it for the Americans to use, essentially paying rent to the Russians. This would be great
for the astronauts, since there are only two bathrooms on the station and one of
them is in the Russian segment. Even if Russia eventually decides to separate from the ISS,
they will need to work with the US to figure out exactly how that would be done.
Each module has layers of internal and external connections that have built up over many years
and they weren’t designed to be disassembled. So actually detaching the Russian segment would be a
huge logistical challenge. Without being connected to the US segment, the Russians would have
no power, so the idea of sailing off and using it by themselves won’t work. That’s why Russia
already has plans to launch its own space station by around 2028. Of course, Russia is no stranger
to space stations, in fact - most space stations that have ever been built were Russian. But with
the current state of the Russian space program, it seems highly unlikely that they’ll have a
brand new space station up and running by then. But either way, their plan is quite interesting.
Their new space station named ‘Ross’ is designed to be very hands off and automated.
The plan is to operate it mostly without humans, with crews only visiting the station every
few months to help out with experiments and maintenance tasks. The station will
feature autonomous robots that hover around the station, performing maintenance on the outside.
Overall, this space station should be lightyears ahead of the ISS in terms of its design - at least
more efficient, cost effective and maintenance friendly. If Russia eventually pulls this off,
we will have 3 space stations orbiting Earth. No matter what you think of the current situation,
that is pretty cool. And with some ambitious plans from NASA and SpaceX, it’s possible that we could
have space stations around the Moon and Mars in the future. But in the end, it’s likely that
Russia’s threat to leave the ISS is no more than just a threat. According to the engineers on the
ground, it’s clear that the goal is to continue working with NASA and the international partners
beyond 2024. And so, despite the age of the space station, it will hopefully continue pushing the
boundaries of science and helping us to further our understanding of Earth and the Universe.
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Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.