US, Russia working on detailed plan of de-orbiting ISS — NASA deputy chief

BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, April 9. /TASS/. NASA and Roscosmos are working on a detailed plan of de-orbiting the International Space Station (ISS), although both sides are not certain about when this might take place, NASA’s associate administrator for Space Operations Mission Directorate Ken Bowersox has told TASS.

"We work together to come up with a detailed plan for how we will actually end station. There is always a chance that we could go longer. There is always a chance we could go shorter if something bad were to happen on station. We work that together as a team with our Russian colleagues and all of our other international partners," he said.

In his words, plans of completing the space station’s operations are among the issues being discussed by Moscow and Washington on a regular basis.

"Right now the United States is committed through 2030 and Russia is committed through 2028. That position is the same as it was a year ago," the US space official said.

The ISS has been in orbit since November 20, 1998. The station has a mass of roughly 435 tons. With docked spacecraft, the mass can reach 470 tons. The participants in this project are Russia, Canada, the United States, Japan and ten member states of the European Space Agency (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland).