Russia Will Not Send U.S. And European Astronauts To ISS After 2018

Russia will not continue to deliver American and European astronauts to the International Space Station after 2018, according to a report from the country’s TASS new agency.

“We are working with our partners under the effective contracts, but we have no plans for concluding new ones,” confirmed Sergey Saveliev, deputy chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The Russian Soyuz is currently the only way for astronauts to reach the space station, with NASA and other national space agencies paying millions to Roscosmos for their astronauts to hitch a ride.

U.S. astronauts have been using the Soyuz since the reusable space shuttle fleet was decommissioned in 2011.

Astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan’s JAXA and the Canadian Space Agency all rely exclusively on the Soyuz to get to the ISS.

If no new contacts are signed for the period following 2018, astronauts from these space agencies could be temporarily grounded.

NASA is currently developing the four-person Orion capsule as a replacement for the space shuttle, but this won’t be ready until at least 2023.

The American space agency has also signed deals with two private companies which may finish their spacecraft earlier.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is due to be ready for manned flights in 2018, while SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule is scheduled to carry out its first manned test in 2017.

American and Russia (and previously the Soviet Union) have a long history of collaboration in space exploration dating back to the early 1970s and carrying on throughout the dying days of the Cold War.

Image credit: ESA/NASA