June 30, 2022: Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin (2nd from left) and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson (right) take part in an exercise for crew members of the International Space Station near Moscow Photo: picture alliance/dpa/TASS | Anton Novoderezhkin
From BZ/dpa
According to information from Moscow, Russia and the USA have agreed on so-called cruise flights to the International Space Station ISS. A corresponding agreement on the entrainment of Russian and American astronauts in the other country’s rockets had already been signed on Thursday, Russia’s space agency Roskosmos announced on Telegram on Friday.
“The agreement corresponds to the interests of Russia and the United States,” says the authority in Moscow. In this way, it can be guaranteed that in the event of delayed or canceled rocket launches, there will always be at least one Roskosmos and one NASA member on the ISS.
Astronaut Francisco Rubion and cosmonaut Anna Kikina will be the first astronauts to launch “cruise flights” from each other’s countries in September.
US astronauts had already flown into space with Russian Soyuz rockets from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan until 2020. After that, manned ISS flights took off from American soil again. NASA relies on the space transporter “Crew Dragon” from the private company SpaceX. Russia’s cosmonauts, on the other hand, recently only set out with their own rockets to reach the outpost of mankind at an altitude of around 400 kilometers.
In view of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it was recently puzzling how Russian-American space cooperation would continue. In particular, the previous head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, repeatedly appeared as a hardliner loyal to the Kremlin.
On Friday, the 58-year-old was replaced by the previous Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borissow. It is not yet known how Rogozin’s career will continue. According to media reports, he could either take a leading post in the presidential administration or manage one of the separatist areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow recognizes as independent.