TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Russia, US agree additional US astronaut flight to ISS: Interfax
The flight is part of an agreement between Russia's space agency Roscosmos and NASA in the United States on cross-flights to the International Space Station (ISS).
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
In this file photo taken on March 7, 2011, the NASA handout image shows a close-up view of the International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-133 crew member on space shuttle Discovery after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation. (AFP/NASA)
Russian and US space authorities have agreed an additional flight for an American astronaut on board Russia's Soyuz MS spacecraft, Interfax news agency said on Friday, in a rare sign of bilateral cooperation at a time of high tension over Ukraine.
The flight is part of an agreement between Russia's space agency Roscosmos and NASA in the United States on cross-flights to the International Space Station (ISS).
"One of the Americans has been essentially left [on board the ISS] for two missions. We have added another flight to compensate for the time spent at the station," Sergei Krikalev, executive director of the state corporation for manned programmes, told Interfax.
"This is a mutually beneficial business, we interact with each other and look for the best option. In principle, a good story, the exchange of flights, adds a little reliability to our program," he said.
Washington and Moscow have maintained cooperation in space despite relations hitting their lowest in decades over the Ukraine conflict, with astronauts stationed together at the ISS, and also ferried back and forth jointly.
Under an agreement signed last year as part of the ISS program on cross flights, three Russian cosmonauts were to fly on the United States' Crew Dragon spacecraft and three US astronauts on Russia's Soyuz MS during 2022-2024.
Russia has said it will quit the ISS and launch its own independent space station at some time in the future, though plans for how and when remain under discussion.
The ISS, a science laboratory spanning the size of a football field and orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, has been occupied continuously for more than two decades under a US-Russian-led partnership that also includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
Russia's space program suffered a big setback this week when its unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft crashed while attempting to land on the south pole of the moon, three days before India's Chandrayaan-3 successfully managed to do so,
