Saint-Petersburg. June 4. INTERFAX-Roscosmos and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will discuss the possibility of commercial use of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, the head of the state corporation Dmitry Rogozin told reporters.
"Russia's withdrawal from the Russian segment will raise questions, so, most likely, we will look for opportunities to commercialize work in the Russian segment," Rogozin said, speaking about the agenda of upcoming telephone talks with the head of NASA on Friday.
"The Americans are also following this path. I think we will find a reasonable solution, " he added.
The head of Roscosmos stressed that in parallel, " in no case should we slow down the creation of a national station."
Earlier, the executive director of the state Corporation for Science, Alexander Bloshenko, said that Russia is ready to continue to support its segment of the ISS, but with the financial participation of the United States.
"We will be ready, if the American side is interested, to maintain our segment on some paid terms," Bloshenko told reporters.
He explained that Roscosmos does not want to spend its resources to work at the station, provided that the increasing time required for its repair will interfere with the scientific program.
Earlier it was reported that Russia may withdraw from the ISS project from 2025, transferring responsibility for its segment to the station's partners. At the same time, Bloshenko said that Russia can continue to support its segment with the financial participation of the United States.
The alternative is to create a national space station, the first module of which is planned to be launched in 2025, and to complete the deployment in 2035.
As the head of Roscosmos reported, the cost of maintaining the Russian segment of the ISS after 2025 will be comparable to the creation of a new station. According to him, the state corporation is ready to start creating a new station now and is waiting for the relevant instructions of the government and the president.
The new station will not be permanently inhabited, like the ISS, but visited because of the increased radiation danger. The President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Sergeev, noted that robots and artificial intelligence are planned to be used at the station.
According to the head of the flight of the Russian segment of the ISS, Vladimir Solovyov, at the first stage, the station will consist of four modules, and in the future their number will increase to six. The crew of the station will be two to four people, the volume of the hermetic compartments will be 667 cubic meters at the second stage. At the same time, the number of external jobs will reach 48. Astronauts will visit the station once or twice a year, and it is also planned to send up to three cargo ships a year to the station.
Russia will be able to finance the construction of a new orbital station itself, but it is also ready for cooperation, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said on April 19, noting that the station can be "a kind of intermediate point for flights and exploration of the Moon, lunar space."
