OREANDA-NEWS. November 21, 2008. ISS lifetime may be extended up to 2020, stated Anatoly Perminov, Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency said.

Roscosmos Head informs that the need to prolong ISS operational lifetime is caused by the postponed launches of the scientific modules. This delay occured, in particular, due to Columbia disaster in 2003 and a gap of 2.5 years in the shuttle missions to the ISS. This year, reminds Russian space leader, ESA docked its Columbus module, and Japan launched their Kibo module to the ISS. Russia also plans to launch ist scintific ISS modules in 2009 and 2010. These will be small research modules, and the larger one is planned to fly to the station in 2011.

According to Perminov, among the parties involved in the project, only the USA was againts prolonging the ISS lifetime. But recently NASA leaders started expressing their positive opinions regarding this decision. Roscosmos Head hopes that the USA, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada will make a technical decision about extending ISS operations during the next summit of the Space Agencies Heads. Final decision is to be made by the governments of the ISS partner-states.