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The 23-year partnership between the United States and Russia that has kept the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit could soon come to an end, Russian officials suggested this week.

Yury Borisov, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, reportedly said in a government meeting that the nation might withdraw from the ISS in 2025, according to a state TV news report on April 18. Borisov cited the deteriorating condition of the space station which was launched in 1998 by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos as the primary reason for the potential departure.

"We can't risk the lives [of our cosmonauts]," Borisov said, according to the BBC. "The structure and the metal [are] getting old, [and] it can lead to irreversible consequences to catastrophe."

Related: Space oddity: 10 bizarre things Earthlings launched into space

Later that day, Borisov released a statement partially walking back the 2025 departure date, saying, "a technical inspection is needed, and then we can make a decision and inform our partners," according to Science magazine.

Meanwhile officials with Roscosmos announced that work has already begun on a national space station, which would serve as a successor to the country's Salyut and Mir stations, launched into low Earth orbit in the 1970s and 80s. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, posted a video to the messaging app Telegram saying, "the first core module of the new Russian orbital station is in the works" and could be complete by 2025, the BBC reported.

Rogozin added that Russian would not depart from the ISS until that potential new station was completed. Still, even with ample notice Russia's potential departure could put a hefty strain on NASA and the other agencies that rely on the ISS.

"ISS partners would have a really hard time keeping the station functional without Russia," Vitaly Egorov, an industry observer and former spokesperson for Russia's Dauria Aerospace company, told Science magazine. Cargo and crew services provided by SpaceX could potentially help fill the gaps left behind by Roscosmos, the magazine added.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Russia wants to build its own space station to replace the ISS, state officials say - Space.com

The core module of Chinas space station undergoes a vacuum test to simulate the conditions it will see in orbit.

The core module of Chinas space station is packaged inside the nose cone of a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket for liftoff late Wednesday (U.S. time), the first of 11 launches to deliver astronauts, supplies, experiments, and new laboratory modules to build out the orbiting complex before the end of 2022.

The massive Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, core module will be the keystone of the Chinese space station in low Earth orbit a few hundred miles above the planet, serving as astronaut living quarters, a command and control element, an airlock for spacewalks, and a docking port for attachment of future crew and cargo vehicles.

The fully-assembled outpost will be around 66 metric tons, about one-sixth the mass of the International Space Station, and is closer in size to Russias retired Mir station than the ISS.China will add two research modules to the space station in 2022.

The launch is scheduled for a one-hour period beginning at 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0300 GMT; 11 a.m. Beijing time Thursday), according to publicly-released airspace warning notices. Several sources suggest the launch is scheduled for approximately 11:18 p.m. EDT (0318 GMT), although the Chinese government has not disclosed an exact liftoff time.

China has not announced any plans to broadcast the launch live on state-run television.

The liftoff of the Tianhe core module begins the most ambitious project in the history of Chinas human spaceflight program, which seeks to create its own space station after being shut out of the International Space Station, led by U.S. and Russian space agencies.

The core element of the space station will blast off on Chinas most powerful launcher, the Long March 5B, with 10 engines burning liquid hydrogen and kerosene fuel. The 176-foot-tall (53.7-meter) Long March 5B rocket rolled out to its launch pad Friday at the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island, Chinas southernmost province.

Gantry arms folded into position around the rocket to allow ground teams to finish preparations for liftoff. Liquid hydrogen, kerosene, and liquid oxygen propellants will begin loading into the Long March 5B a few hours before launch.

The fully-fueled Long March 5B rocket will weigh more than 1.8 million pounds (849 metric tons) at launch. The rockets liquid-fueled engines will power the launcher off the pad with about 2.4 million pounds of thrust, guiding the rocket toward the southeast from Wenchang over the South China Sea.

The Long March 5B will shed its four expendable strap-on boosters about three minutes after liftoff, and the rockets payload fairing will jettison about 3 minutes, 40 seconds, into the mission. The rockets cryogenic center stage will place the Tianhe spacecraft into orbit and deploy the space station module about eight minutes after launch.

The Long March 5B is a variant of Chinas heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket specially designed to haul heavy elements of Chinas space station into orbit. The Long March 5B flies without the Long March 5s second stage, making room for a large spacecraft to fit inside the rockets payload shroud.

China demonstrated the Long March 5B rocket on a successful test flight in May 2020, proving the rockets readiness to launch components of the Chinese space station. Six Long March 5 rockets have launched in various configurations, and the last four Long March 5 missions have been successful, with five successes overall.

The Tianhe module measuresmore than 54.4 feet (16.6 meters) long, has a maximum diameter of around 13.8 feet (4.2 meters), and has a launch weight of roughly 49,600 pounds (22.5 metric tons), according to Chinas state-run Xinhua news agency. Its the largest and heaviest spacecraft ever built in China.

The core module resembles the first section of Russias Mir space station, but the Tianhe spacecraft is longer and heavier.

The 11 missions to kick off assembly of Chinas space station include the the launch of three pressurized modules on Long March 5B rockets and resupply flights using Tianzhou cargo freighters launched on Long March 7 rockets from Wenchang. The flights will also include Shenzhou crew capsules launched on Long March 2F rockets from Jiuquan, an inland spaceport in the Gobi Desert in Chinas Inner Mongolia region.

China launched two Tiangong prototype space labs in 2011 and 2016 to test out technologies for the permanently-occupied space station.

The Tiangong 1 space lab hosted two Shenzhou crew in 2012 and 2013, and Chinas most recent human spaceflight mission Shenzhou 11 docked with the Tiangong 2 module in 2016.

In total, China has launched six astronaut missions on Shenzhou capsules since 2003.

China also launched a test flight of the Tianzhou supply ship, similar in function to Russias Progress or SpaceXs Cargo Dragon capsule supporting the International Space Station. The first Tianzhou freighter took off on a Long March 7 rocket in 2017 and docked with the Tiangong 2 space lab, proving out automated docking and in-orbit refueling technology.

After the Tiangong pathfinders verified key technologies for the Chinese space station, officials are moving ahead with integrating the complex in low Earth orbit between 210 miles (340 kilometers) and 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth.

Once the Tianhe module is in orbit, Chinese space officials will complete preparations for launch of a Long March 7 rocket in May carrying the Tianzhou 2 resupply ship. The cargo freighter will automatically dock with the Tianhe module a few days after launch, setting the stage for liftoff of a Long March 2F from the Jiuquan space base as soon as June with the first astronaut crew to visit the nascent space station.

Chinese officials have said they have selected crew members for the Shenzhou 12 mission, and astronaut training is underway. The astronauts will carry out multiple spacewalks on their mission to link up with the Tianhe module in orbit.

The Tianhe core module has handrails to assist astronauts moving around outside the space station on spacewalks.

Chinese officials say the space station is designed to operate for more than 10 years. Once assembly is complete, the station will be able to permanently host three astronauts, with short-term stays of six astronauts possible during crew changeovers.

The core module has an internal living volume of about 1,765 cubic feet (50 cubic meters), according to Xinhua. With all three modules, the living space will grow to 3,884 cubic feet (110 cubic meters). For comparison, NASA says the International Space Station has a habitable volume of13,696 cubic feet (388 cubic meters).

One of the two research modules scheduled for launch next year, named Wentian, will have a larger airlock than the Tianhe core module to support spacewalks, plus a robotic arm to move payloads and science experiments outside the space station.

The other research module, named Mengtian, is similar to Wentian but has a special airlock to transfer cargo and instruments between the interior and exterior of the space station, Xinhua said.

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First element of Chinese space station ready for liftoff Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

By Leah Crane

An artists impression of the completed Chinese Space Station

Xia Yuan/Getty Images

China is about to launch the first section of a new space station, beginning an orbital construction project that is expected to end in 2022 with an outpost about a quarter of the size of the International Space Station (ISS).

While the exact date hasnt been announced, China is expected to launch its 18-metre-long core module, called Tianhe, this week. Tianhe will contain living quarters for up to three astronauts, along with the stations control centre, power, propulsion and life-support systems. It will be followed by two other main modules, both designed to house scientific experiments.

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The Chinese Space Station (CSS) will be the 11th crewed space station ever built. It is Chinas third station, although the previous two were significantly smaller. The CSS will be slightly larger than Mir, the Soviet space station that preceded the ISS.

China, in a sense, is trying to catch up with capabilities that other space powers that have already done, says space analyst Laura Forczyk. One of the things that helps China here is that their government is not democratic, so there isnt the infighting that we have in the US about what the priorities are and how to fund them.

That has allowed the nation to develop this technology relatively quickly, but Charles Bolden, who served as NASA administrator under President Barack Obama, says China will struggle to match US capabilities in space. Technologically, I dont think theyre going to catch up as long as we keep up with the pace that were going in terms of human space flight.

Another boon to the Chinese space programme has been a growing partnership with Roscosmos, Russias space agency, which comes while NASAs historically strong cooperation with Roscosmos in space is waning. For the past decade, NASA has been reliant on purchasing seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the ISS, but now the US has its own crewed launch capabilities through SpaceX. In April, Dmitry Rogozin, chief of Roscosmos, said that the country plans to end its participation in the ISS in 2025, and will build its own space station to be launched in 2030.

Weve seen China and Russia partnering quite a bit recently, because Russia has significant expertise in space and with space stations, says Forczyk. China is capitalising on the expertise and experience of the Russian space sector while also providing a significant amount of funds, which Russia does not have.

However, to some in the Western world, this partnership and the rapid growth of Chinas space capabilities have caused concern about military ambitions. A recent report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence on global threats includes a mention of the new space station. It warns that China is working to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits of matching the USs capabilities in space.

Nevertheless, historically, these space stations have been for the purpose of increasing human understanding, and we have no reason to suspect that China is using its space station for anything different, says Forczyk.

The China National Space Administration has already selected several experiments to be run onboard the CSS, including work with ultracold atoms to research quantum mechanics, materials science research and work on medicine in microgravity. It has several international partners that will send experiments onto the space station, including the Italian Space Agency and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

NASA, on the other hand, wont be a partner the US has laws restricting the agency from collaborating with China, which Bolden sees as a mistake because commercial and international partners could choose to work with China instead.

Wed end up on the outside looking in. Thats why I think we should be collaborating with the Chinese I think the smaller nations look for the best offer, he says. I think a pretty savvy commercial entrepreneur might in fact blaze a trail, might be able to work collaboratively with the Chinese, the Russians and the Americans and pull us together. That might not happen, but Im the eternal optimist.

While this utopian vision of space collaboration may be unlikely, the launch of the CSS will almost certainly have an effect on the USs stance in Earth orbit because of its potential geopolitical implications.

It will cause a reaction what that reaction is remains to be seen, says Forczyk. I dont know if we can say that this will provoke American politicians to fund the ISS for longer or to encourage commercial space stations or some third option.

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China is about to start building a space station in orbit - New Scientist News

Astrophotography enthusiast Andrew McCarthy shared a three-slide post showing the transit of the International Space Station (ISS) against the Moon caught in a sunbeam that is going viral. The post will delight space and astronomy enthusiasts as it shows a truly amazing sight as the ISS crosses the Moon, lit up in amazing detail.

The second slide in the post shows a fascinating view of the ISS against the crescent, while the third one is a video in which the station can be seen briskly moving past the Moon. This was a transit captured from my backyard this morning, and a difficult shot to capture since the moon was practically invisible against the glare of the sun. The transit against the lit portion of the moon lasted just a few hundredths of a second, shown here in a video slowed down roughly 6x, McCarthy wrote in his post, dated two weeks ago.

On April 10, McCarthy had shared a thread about the same on Twitter as well. The California-based photographer said it was the most difficult transit that he had ever attempted to capture.

"Today, the @Space_Station briefly transited the 5.6% crescent moon. This was the most difficult transit I've ever attempted to capture. It required taking over 150 pictures per second to make sure I got it lined up properly," he had tweeted.

Reacting to the transition video of ISS against the Moon, a Twitter user, @mailutkarsh97, asked if the station looked like TIE fighter ship from Star Wars.

Here are more reactions to McCarthy's brilliance.

So, did you like the pictures and video captured by McCarthy? Do let us know in the comments.

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International Space Station Cruises Across the Moon, Caught in Sunlight: Watch the Video - Gadgets 360

A French astronaut who leaves Earth these days does not leave French food behind.

Here are some of the foods that Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut who launched on a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station on Friday, will enjoy during his six-month stay in orbit: lobster, beef bourguignon, cod with black rice, potato cakes with wild mushrooms and almond tarts with caramelized pears.

Theres a lot of expectations when you send a Frenchman into space, Mr. Pesquet said during a European Space Agency news conference last month. Im a terrible cook myself, but its OK if people are doing it for me.

Space cuisine has come a long way since Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet astronaut who in 1961 was the first to reach space, squeezed pured beef and chocolate sauce from toothpaste-like tubes. The food for John Glenn, who 10 months later became the first American in orbit, was not any tastier. He swallowed some apple sauce.

Nowadays, astronauts get to share the culinary creations of their countries, and the worlds space agencies are showing that while life in space is hectic, an astronaut should at least be able to enjoy a quality meal now and then.

Thats why Mr. Pesquet and his crewmates aboard the station will get to dine on dishes prepared by three separate French culinary institutions. Obviously, all my colleagues are expecting good food, he said.

Alain Ducasse, a chef who operates renowned restaurants around the world including Benoit in Manhattan, has collaborated for years with the French space agency to create menu items available to astronauts aboard the space station.

In addition, another Michelin-starred chef, Thierry Marx, and Raphal Haumont, a physical chemistry professor at the University of Paris-Saclay, have created some dishes specifically for Mr. Pesquet. The two run the universitys French Centre of Culinary Innovation and had cooked some meals for Mr. Pesquets first trip to the space station in 2016. (Mr. Pesquet and Mr. Marx had met by chance at a judo conference a few years earlier. Both are black belts.)

Mr. Pesquet, a former Air France pilot, also asked Servair, a catering company for Air France and other airlines, to devise some dishes for him.

Ive enjoyed their food for a long time, he said.

Mr. Pesquet will not be dining on lobster and beef bourguignon every day. These meticulously prepared dishes are intended for celebrations of special occasions like birthdays, with enough servings for Mr. Pesquet to share.

But even everyday space cuisine that NASA now provides for astronauts these days is pretty fantastic, said Shane Kimbrough, the NASA astronaut who is the commander of Fridays SpaceX mission.

Ryan Dowdy, who just left NASA after managing food on the space station for more than two years, says there are some 200 items on the menu to ward off monotony. Theres no grocery store, he said. You cant DoorDash anything. You got to make do with whats there.

He touts the pulled beef brisket and the macaroni and cheese as particularly scrumptious.

It needs to remind people of their experiences of eating food on Earth, he said. It reminds them of all those good things in this really stressful spaceflight environment.

Still, food in space cannot be exactly like food on Earth. Much of it is freeze-dried, with the water extracted, to reduce its size and volume. Other foods are heated to high temperatures to kill off germs so that they can sit around at room temperature, sealed in cans and plastic bags, for a couple of years before being eaten. Space food should also not be crumbly, disintegrating into bits that could be inhaled or float into sensitive equipment.

Astronauts inject water into the plastic bags to rehydrate dried foods. A forced-air convection oven heats other dishes.

For the health of the astronauts, the foods are usually low in sodium, sugar and fat.

They are high-performance athletes, Mr. Marx said.

Alcohol is also prohibited a particular challenge for French cuisine that prizes wine. Mr. Marx did not leave out the wine from the mushroom sauce accompanying an entree of slow-cooked beef and vegetables. But then the alcohol was extracted through a spinning evaporator without removing the flavor. The sauce was then verified to be alcohol-free via a nuclear magnetic resonance instrument.

The flavors also have to survive the sterilization process what food scientists call thermo-stabilization. That usually means heating the food to 140 degrees Celsius, or 285 degrees Fahrenheit, for an hour, Dr. Haumont said. Can you imagine a cake or a piece of chicken or something like that on Earth? he said. More than an hour of cooking at 140 destroyed the structure. So, we have to rework the cooking techniques.

But instead of frustration, Dr. Haumont described the process as exciting playing with spices and ingredients not traditionally found in French food, like seaweed.

There are small tricks like this to produce umami that will reveal certain flavors, he said.

Mr. Marxs dishes were assembled in the cans by hand to offer the visual flare of fine dining.

Franois Adamski, the corporate chef of Servair, also had to experiment with his recipes. A risotto-like dish used einkorn, an ancient wheat grain, instead of rice, to add some crunchiness, and sauces were thickened so droplets were less likely to float away.

The history of French chefs cooking for astronauts goes back to 1993 when a French astronaut, Jean-Pierre Haigner, returned from a visit to Russias Mir space station and said everything in space went well except the food.

Richard Filippi, a chef and cooking instructor in southwest France, heard Mr. Haigners complaints on the radio and contacted the National Centre for Space Studies Frances equivalent of NASA offering to help. Mr. Filippi and his students then cooked up beef daube, quail, tuna and lemon confit and other foods that accompanied French astronauts on subsequent missions to Mir in the 1990s.

When the French space agency looked to restart the program in 2004 for the International Space Station, Mr. Filippi had retired and suggested Mr. Ducasse.

The first of Mr. Ducasses food for the agency was eaten in space in 2007. Mr. Ducasses team has now come up with more than 40 recipes for astronauts, including recent additions like flourless, gluten-free chocolate cake and vegetarian options like carrot clafoutis with smoked paprika and quinoa cooked with saffron broth and vegetables.

We have a lovely lobster, with some quinoa, with a lemon condiment, said Jrme Lacressonnire, the chef director of Mr. Ducasses consulting company, which is producing the space food. That is despite having to cook it longer and hotter than would be acceptable at a Ducasse restaurant on Earth.

Despite the best efforts of the chefs and scientists, some things do not work. At the beginning we were trying to do a croissant, said Alain Maillet, a French space agency scientist who works with Mr. Ducasses cooks. The result, he said, was awful.

It was not working at all, Dr. Maillet said. It was not possible to put a croissant in a can and have it thermo-stabilized.

NASA continues to add to its space menu too. Perhaps befitting an agency of rocket engineers, the processes for creating the foods are recorded not as recipes, but as specifications. The food is produced a few hundred pounds at a time and it has to be manufactured the same way each time.

Just like any other piece of a rocket engine or a spacesuit, our food is a government-certified spaceflight hardware that fulfills a specific function, Dr. Dowdy said.

One of the newest pieces of NASA edible spaceflight hardware is a sweet and savory kale salad. With advances in food science, the kale, after adding 75 milliliters of hot water and waiting five to 10 minutes, retains some crunch and texture.

Its not like eating straight-up raw kale, Dr. Dowdy said. We developed a specific cooking and freeze-drying process that doesnt completely turn it to mush.

The astronauts at the space station do eat ice cream on occasion. There are freezers on both the spacecraft taking cargo to the space station and the space station itself.

If there ends up being a little extra space in a cold stowage area, then well try to fill that with a frozen dessert for the crew members, Dr. Dowdy said.

With real ice cream available, there is no need in space for those blocks of chalky Neapolitan astronaut ice cream parents buy for their children at museum gift shops. Indeed, in the 60 years of the space age, no astronaut has ever eaten astronaut ice cream, at least not in space.

The freeze-dried ice cream was indeed developed in 1974 for NASA for the gift shop in the agencys Ames Research Center in California. The company that makes it, Outdoor Products of Boulder, Colo., now sells a couple million of them a year.

Cargo missions to the space station also take up fresh produce like apples, oranges and tomatoes.

Recently, refrigerated cheese has started going to space too, a request by Shannon Walker, a NASA astronaut currently at the station. Dr. Dowdy worked with a Houston cheesemonger to find a Belgian Gouda.

We actually developed a way to send refrigerated cheese as Class 1 government-certified spaceflight hardware, Dr. Dowdy said. The crew members absolutely loved it.

Future food challenges in space will include cooking and growing crops. That will become crucial on longer missions like trips to Mars where there will not be a continual arrival of supply ships. Already, astronauts have grown and eaten small harvests of lettuce and radishes grown on the space station.

Using an experimental zero-gravity oven, astronauts in 2019 also baked pouches of raw chocolate cookie dough, producing five cookies in all. The astronauts did not eat the cookies, which were sent back to Earth for safety testing.

But without gravity, ovens cannot work the same way. Other common cooking techniques like sauting and stir-frying would not only be messy, with ingredients floating all around, but potentially catastrophic if the flames spread out of control. The physics is also different, with heat transmitted through radiation and direct physical contact instead of the flow of hot air like in ovens on Earth.

I cant wait to see what sort of innovative solutions we come up with to tackle that challenge, Dr. Dowdy said.

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Its Dinner Time on the Space Station. Lobster or Beef Bourguignon? - The New York Times

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A Georgia native is one of four astronauts aboard a rocket headed to the International Space Station Friday morning.

SpaceX and NASA launched the Falcon 9 Rocket at 5:49 a.m. from Cape Canaveral in Florida. This is the second time NASA has partnered with SpaceX to send a crew to the space station.

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Four astronauts are inside the Dragon capsule, including Shane Kimbrough, a Lovett School and Georgia Tech graduate.

The crew will spend six months at the orbiting lab, replacing another SpaceX crew thats close to coming home.

This will be the first crew flight using a recycled Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft. Both were designed for reuse.

The rocket was used to launch the current station crew last November from NASAs Kennedy Space Center. The capsule, dubbed Endeavour, also will be making a repeat performance; it carried two test pilots to the space station on SpaceXs first crew flight last spring.

For nearly a decade, the only route to the space station for astronauts was on Russian rockets. NASA turned to private companies for taxi service after the space shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX has been shipping cargo to the space station since 2012, using the same kind of rocket and similar capsules, and recycling those parts as well.

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Georgia native blasts off to International Space Station aboard SpaceX rocket - WSB Atlanta