Russia is no longer planning to build a space station with entirely new modules. The Russian Orbital Station (ROS), according to a report, will instead have a Russian module currently attached to the International Space Station (ISS) as the main element.
The first module of the ROS was supposed to launch in 2027 and host humans starting 2028 – the year Russia will end its participation with the US, Canada, Japan and Europe in maintaining the ISS. NASA has plans to deorbit the station in 2030 and crash it into the Pacific Ocean, and Russia wants to separate its Nauka module to repurpose it for the ROS.
This was confirmed by Oleg Orlov, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, last week. “The Scientific and Technical Council of Roscosmos supported this proposal and approved the deployment of a Russian orbital station as part of the Russian segment of the ISS,” Orlov stated per Russian newspaper New Izvestia.
Russia’s tweaked space station plan
Russia wanted to install the ROS in a polar orbit 400 km above Earth which would have enabled observations of the entire country, and allowed radiation studies and experiments in the Arctic zone. The station would also have given Russia a reason to invest heavily in the Vostochny Cosmodrome as a replacement of the leased site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The original ROS was supposed to be semi-automated eliminating the requirement of year-long human presence.
The idea originally was to install the ROS at a 96-degree inclination angle but that has now been changed to 51.6-degrees. The revised angle will make the station more easily accessible from Baikonur and enable interaction with the Indian Space Station at a similar inclination. India wants to launch the first Bharatiya Antariksha Station’s (BAS) module in 2028 and complete the construction with more modules by 2035.
According to the new plan, the Nauka module launched in 2021 will serve as the core of the ROS. It measures over 42 feet (13 meters) long and 14 feet (4.3 meters) in diameter, and is the biggest science lab Russia currently owns. The ISS also has other Russian modules like Zvezda [original core], Zarya, Poisk, Rassvest and Prichal which serve as living quarters, cargo storage, and docking ports etc.
While it may be a cost-cutting measure, the idea has met with criticism because the entire ISS has been contaminated with microorganisms in excessive quantities. Some microbes are said to be capable of causing allergic reactions and respiratory tract diseases. Besides, the ISS has components that are three decades old and astronauts spend a lot of their time carrying out repair and restoration work.
New Izvestia reported that Russian cosmonauts spent up to 50% of their time on station repairs in 2023.
Russia has been trying to cut back on space activities owing to its war with Ukraine, which will enter its fifth year in February 2026. Its space agency Roscosmos as already reduced the number of crew launches to ISS every two years from four to three.
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