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Roscosmos and NASA have signed an ISS cross-flight settlement beneath which the businesses will launch combined crews of Russian and American cosmonauts on their spacecraft. The primary two flights beneath the settlement will happen within the autumn: Anna Kikina will be a part of the Crew Dragon crew, and Francisco Rubio will fly on the Soyuz.
This occurred shortly after the dismissal of Dmitry Rogozin as head of the Russian House Company was introduced
Shortly after the dismissal of Dmitry Rogozin as the top of the Russian house company “Roscosmos” was introduced on July 15, it and the American house company NASA introduced that they’d concluded an settlement for joint flights of manned spacecraft crews of Russia and the US , the world businesses reported.
Russia and the US have huge expertise in joint house flights. The primary such missions befell again within the mid-Nineteen Nineties: in 1994, Sergey Krikalev flew into orbit on the Discovery shuttle, and in 1995, Norman Thagard went to the Mir station on the Soyuz TM-21 spacecraft. Cross-flights made it doable to develop cooperation typically, and likewise elevated the reliability of the Mir and ISS packages. In case of issues with the ship of 1 nation, its astronaut might fly to the station on the ship of one other. And in addition to, in an emergency scenario, all members of the expedition had expertise in controlling a spacecraft.
After the House Shuttle program resulted in 2011, U.S. astronauts flew to the ISS solely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft till NASA bought the U.S. SpaceX-designed Crew Dragon. After its first crewed flight on the finish of 2020, there was just one joint flight in early 2021, after which the Soyuz flew solely with a Russian crew, aside from one flight with Japanese house vacationers.
Till lately, NASA paid for the flights of its astronauts on Russian spacecraft. So, in 2020, the company paid $ 90 million for one seat on the Soyuz, and likewise promised to ship a complete of 800 kilograms of Russian cargo. The brand new settlement between Roskosmos and NASA doesn’t suggest fee for flights, however the trade of seats on spacecraft.
Now we find out about at the least a few cross flights, the primary two will happen this fall. So, Anna Kikina will turn into a crew member of the Crew-5 mission together with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, in addition to JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata. That is the primary flight by a Russian cosmonaut on an American spacecraft because the days of the shuttle, and likewise the primary flight by Kikina, who’s now the one girl within the Russian cosmonaut corps.
The precise date of the flight will not be but identified, however it’s anticipated to happen in September. One other crossover flight is scheduled for a similar month: Soyuz MS-22 will journey to the ISS with NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin. The subsequent pair of flights will happen in 2023, when Andrey Fedyaev will go to the ISS as a part of the Crew-6 mission, and Loral O’Hara will participate within the Soyuz MS-23 mission.
Most likely, sooner or later, the second American manned spacecraft, the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, may even be used for cross-flights. His first flight was unsuccessful, however in Might 2022 he efficiently flew to the ISS and returned, so on the finish of this yr or early subsequent yr he ought to begin carrying astronauts to the ISS.
Photograph: Roscosmos
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