https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10678705/Russia-END-cooperation-International-space-station.htmlThis is really sad.
I was hoping that Roskosmos and NASA (and ESA/JAXA and others) could continue to keep this thing operating in spite of the tensions between NATO and Russia.
Then again, with the aerospace and technology sanctions in place against Russia, they likely cannot operate many Soyuz rocket launches and are rationing them for intelligence assets rather than ISS missions.
Very fortunate that Northrop-Grumman's Cygnus cargo craft has recently been certified to provide orbital boost operations for the station, and SpaceX is currently researching modifications to the Dragon capsule's Draco thrusters to enable them to perform the function as well when docked on station. Still, the ISS is not "two halves." There are redundancies between Russian and American sections, there are parts that work a lot better on one half than the other, and the station is effectively doomed if the Russian and American sections are separated.
And given Russia's recent SNAFUs with docking capsules and modules to the ISS, perhaps it'll stay in the sky longer without them anyways. They've thrown the station into a wild tumble twice in the last year or so, and impacted it pretty hard when maneuvering thrusters failed to shut down properly. Then again, Boeing is about to put its Starliner capsule back in the sky this year for a second qualification test, and the first time they screwed up their thruster software (and mission clock), so maybe the ISS should just have protective bumpers installed instead.
