NASA chief Bill Nelson today condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but said he expects Russians and Americans to continue working together on the International Space Station until it is decommissioned.

US-Russian space cooperation has been called into question since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Yuri Borisov, the director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, surprised NASA by announcing last July that Moscow intended to end its cooperation with the space station “after 2024”. A day later, however, NASA said that Roscosmos wants to continue this cooperation.

Nelson, who is in Ottawa to unveil the Artemis II space mission, which also includes a Canadian astronaut, recalled that the US and USSR cooperated in space even during the Cold War and expects that cooperation with Moscow to continue despite the war in Ukraine.

We “totally disagree” with Putin’s war that is “slaughtering people and invading a sovereign, sovereign country,” Nelson said in an interview with Reuters.

But “cooperation on the ISS continues in a professional manner between astronauts and cosmonauts, without obstacles. And I expect that to continue until the end of the decade,” he added.

The ISS was launched in 1998 and has been in continuous operation since November 2000, as part of a partnership between the US, Russia, Canada, Japan and eleven European countries. NASA plans to decommission it in January 2031.