A future international space station (ISS) could be built on another planet rather than in the Earth’s orbit, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.
“Is there a reason to continue the ISS program, as the station rotates around the Earth,” Rogozin told a news conference about the future of space exploration.
“Maybe it would make more sense to implement these types of international projects by placing space stations on other planets,” he said. “We should think about that.”
The ISS is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit, which was launched in 1998 and is still being expanded by adding new modules to its structure.
It is a joint project between five participating space agencies; the American NASA, the Russian Roscosmos, the Japanese JAXA, the European ESA, and the Canadian CSA.
The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for future missions to other planets.
The service life of the current orbital station ends in 2015, but it is expected to be extended until at least 2020, and potentially to 2028.
