Launched in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000 under an US-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.Launched in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000 under an US-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
The two former Cold War adversaries signed a crew exchange agreement less than two weeks ago allowing US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts to share flights on each other’s spacecraft to and from International Space Station in the future. Launched in 1998, the ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2000 under an US-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
“Nothing official yet,” Gatens said in an interview at an ISS conference in Washington. “We haven’t gotten anything official.” The ISS arrangement, which has endured numerous strains over the years, has stood as one of the last links of civil cooperation as Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine sent relations between Washington and Moscow to a new post-Cold War low.
The US and Russian segments of the ISS, spanning the size of a football field and orbiting some 400 km above Earth, were deliberately built to be intertwined and technically interdependent.