Russian space agency and NASA negotiate on seats for space flights to ISS

NUR-SULTAN, Jun 2, 2020, TASS. Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA conduct negotiations on mutual provision of seats in spacecraft for flights towards the International Space Station, Roscosmos representative in Kazakhstan Anatoly Krasnikov said at a briefing Tuesday, TASS reported.

“Currently, Roscosmos state corporation and NASA talk about mutual provision of seats for flights to the ISS. We are talking about a situation when Russian cosmonauts will fly on American spacecraft and American astronauts will continue flying on our spacecraft. It is clear that this is a pressing need, because we all see that a new system for delivery of humans to the ISS has appeared,” Krasnikov said.

He noted that the ISS crew members must be able to operate both transport systems to “conduct mutual backup.”

“Of course, there is interest in that from both Russian and American sides,” the representative said.

According to Krasnikov, Roscosmos is sincerely happy for its US American colleagues that the Crew Dragon spacecraft launch and its docking with the ISS went without issues.

“We wholeheartedly congratulate them, it is indeed a very big success for them and it is fantastic,” he said.

The Falcon 9 carrier missile with the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft started towards the ISS from Cape Canaveral Saturday. The launch took two attempts: on Wednesday, the launch was cancelled in 17 minutes over bad weather around the launch site. This is the first manned flight from the US territory on the US-made spacecraft in nine years. The Crew Dragon successfully docked with the ISS Sunday.