A decades long partnership at the International Space Station will come to an end in 2024 following an announcement from newly appointed head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov.

The space agency head told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the agency would fulfil its obligations to its partners but the decision to leave had been made.

“You know that we are working within the framework of international cooperation at the International Space Station. Undoubtedly, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said in a statement seen by CNN.

Bizarrely, however, despite signing an agreement allowing Russian and US crew members to share flights to and from the ISS, NASA says it has no knowledge of Russia’s intentions.

“NASA has not been made aware of decisions from any of our partners, though we are continuing to build future capabilities to assure our major presence in low-Earth orbit,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson told Reuters.

This presents something of a problem as the ISS is made up of a Russian Orbital Segment and a US Orbital Segment. Each of these segments relies on the other for operation. With out the US segment, the Russian segment gets no power and the US segment needs the Russian propulsion system.

How exactly Russia would exit the ISS then is unclear as it can’t simply uncouple and push its segment into the spacecraft cemetery. We suspect that it will be a personnel exit but even this presents a problem for NASA which will need to find crew to take over Russia’s operations.

NASA intends to keep the ISS in operation until at least 2030 but with this latest development, the future is now very unclear. As for what will happen after 2030, there are several proposals for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit. One of these is the Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef which has already attracted investment from NASA.