STAR CITY, near Moscow. Oct 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The International Space Station's (ISS) service life could be extended from 2020 until 2028, Alexei Krasnov, the head of the human flights programs of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said on Tuesday.
"Initially, the station was to function until 2015, now its service life is to last until 2020," he said at the 2011 Space Forum at the Cosmonauts Training Center outside of Moscow.
"Experts have been tasked to assess the daring idea of keeping it in orbit for 30 years until 2028," Krasnov said.
It is to be decided how the ISS could be used further, for instance, as a site for assembling spacecraft to fly on distant missions and to return back to a low near-earth orbit, he said.