Roscosmos, NASA agree to extend accord on cross flights to ISS

The space agencies of Russia and the United States, Roscosmos and NASA, agreed to extend the agreement on cross flights to the International Space Station (ISS) until 2025, which means two more launches, the director of manned programs, Sergei Krikaliov declared on November 23.

“The second annex on the continuation of cross flights provides for an extension until 2025. In fact, there are two more flights,” he said in an interview with Russian agency Interfax.

Last October, the Russian Government approved the negotiations between Roscosmos and NASA for the signing of a second annex to the agreement on cross flights to the orbital platform.

This agreement was signed in July 2022 and originally involves the flight of three Russian cosmonauts in American Crew Dragon spacecraft and three American astronauts in Russian Soyuz MS spacecraft between 2022 and 2024.

Last March, Roscosmos announced the signing of a first annex, which provides for the additional sending of a Russian cosmonaut aboard a US ship.

Russia plans to send cosmonaut Alexandr Grebionkin on that occasion, who will join the American crew of Crew-8 in the first half of 2024.

The last crossed flights took place last August, when Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov traveled to the ISS aboard the Crew Dragon-7, and in September, when the American Loral O’Hara flew to the orbital platform on the Soyuz MS-7. 24.

The ISS, the most ambitious international space project in history, turns a quarter of a century old this year. Russia launched the first block on November 20, 1998, to which a US block was added in December of the same year.

In fact, it is the most expensive facility created by humanity throughout history, and has remained, to this day, outside the vagaries of politics and tensions between Russia and the West, which have been shot after the start of the war in Ukraine.