(Reuters) – The head of Russia’s space agency on Monday suggested Moscow’s partners in the BRICS group – Brazil, India, China and South Africa – could build a module for its planned orbital station, the Interfax news agency reported.
Reporting from a BRICS meeting on space cooperation in Hermanus, South Africa, Interfax said it was “assumed” that the first module of the Russian Orbital Station (ROS) would be launched in 2027, with construction completed by 2032.
By then, the International Space Station – one of the last forums of cooperation between Washington and Moscow as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent relations to a post-Cold War low – is likely to have been decommissioned.
“I would like to invite BRICS partners to … create a fully-fledged module that, being part of the ROS, would allow the BRICS countries to use the possibilities of low-Earth orbit to implement their national space programmes,” Interfax quoted Roscosmos Director-General Yuri Borisov as telling the meeting.
Roskosmos said last August that its new space station would consist of six modules and a service platform, to accommodate up to four cosmonauts, and be built in two phases. It gave no dates.
In September, Borisov said the station would orbit Earth around the poles, enabling it to look down on far more of Russia’s vast territory and gather new data on cosmic radiation.
(Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
