A concept of the Russian successor to the ISS

Russian-American cooperation on the development of the International Space Station, ISS, created great hopes for the future of the manned space program, but also left a bad taste in the mouth of both sides. From the outset, Americans grew impatient from depending on chronically underfunded Russian hardware, and the resulting bickering over money, while Russians have often felt taken advantage of in their desperate economic situation. Not surprisingly, as the ISS project had finally entered the assembly stage at the turn of the 21st century, the two sides started thinking about their separate ways in space.

[link to www.russianspaceweb.com]

On December 15, 2014, answering questions from journalists at the end of an annual press-conference, the head of Roskosmos, Oleg Ostapenko said that the agency had been considering options for the development of the High-Latitude Orbital Station, also known by its Russian abbreviation as VShOS. According to Ostapenko, the new space station would enable to monitor more than 90 percent of the nation's territory (thanks to the higher inclination of its orbit toward the Equator than that of the ISS). In the future, the station would also serve as a foundation for the Russian lunar exploration program, Ostapenko said. The orbitahater site could function as a permanently inhabited facility or as a fully automated spacecraft with periodic visits by the crew, according to Ostapenko.

[link to www.russianspaceweb.com]

As of 2014, the launch of the MLM module was set for 2017, however it envisioned its docking at the ISS. Should the Kremlin decide to build a whole new station around it, the ill-fated spacecraft would have to be grounded again. First off all, it would have to be modified to function as the core of the future station, instead of just an addition to an existing Russian segment, which is already in place to provide the new arrival with flight control, power, life support and communications.

The current deadline established by the Kremlin for the first manned launch from Vostochny is 2018 and recent Russian documents revealed a plan to launch an unmanned OKA-T laboratory on a Soyuz-2 rocket at that time.