Trilok Singh
NASA and Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos are planning to hold joint training sessions for mixed missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the media reported.
Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate, announced the “intergovernmental agreements” on Friday, TASS news agency reported.
“The Russians, based on the number of missions that the SpaceX had flown, they have agreed to further the processing of our intergovernmental agreements where we eventually would be flying US crew members on the Soyuz and the Russian cosmonauts on the US SpaceX vehicle,” Lueders was quoted as saying.
“We are very excited to see that we have made progress with them (Russia) at least on the first steps going forward and have our initial cosmonauts beginning to do assessments and training with suits and us beginning to do the training for that,” she added.
On October 26, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin said that the Russian space agency and NASA had begun detailed talks about flying crew members for missions by Russian cosmonauts on board US SpaceX vehicles and NASA astronauts on board Soyuz spacecraft.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft has docks with orbital outpost ISS. The cargo spaceship launched on early Thursday night from the Baikonur spaceport, the report said.
The spaceship was earlier reported to deliver to the ISS 470 kg fuel, 420 litres of drinking water, 40 kgs of air and oxygen in containers, 1,509 kg of equipment and materials, medical control and sanitary tools, clothing items, meals and fresh products.
Progress MS-18 spacecraft will remain docked with the ISS until next year.
(With the inputs of agency).
