The acting head of NASA, Steve Yurchik, in an interview with Spaceflight Now, called the possible dates of flights of Russian cosmonauts on the American spacecraft Crew Dragon and Starliner.
According to the interim administrator, the first flight will not take place until next year. According to Yurchik, we are talking about the SpaceX Crew-4 mission, which will be launched no earlier than the first quarter of 2022.
The acting head of NASA noted that the draft version of the corresponding "implementation agreement" between NASA and Roscosmos is still under consideration by the US State Department. After the approval of this version of the agreement by the State Department, NASA and Roscosmos should begin discussing its final form.
The publication writes that after the agreement is signed by all parties, the Russian cosmonaut will need to get permission to travel to the United States, make an individual spacesuit and pass basic training for flights on Crew Dragon.
Spaceflight Now notes that NASA is interested in cross-flying astronauts and astronauts on American and Russian spacecraft.
In March Interfax, referring to the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center Pavel Vlasov , reported that Russian cosmonaut Sergei Korsakov in the near future may go to the International Space Station (ISS) on Crew Dragon.
In May 2020, the launch of a heavy Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft with American astronauts on board to the ISS took place. The previous time the United States independently delivered people to low-Earth orbit was on July 8, 2011, when the reusable manned spacecraft Atlantis of the Space Shuttle program was launched. After that, the US used Russian Soyuz-series ships to send people to the ISS.
Ivan Potapov
