Moscow. January 1st. INTERFAX - Roscosmos expects a new flight to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a "cross" program with NASA in the second half of 2022, the state corporation said on Saturday.
"The first flight of the integrated crew is planned in the second half of 2022," Roscosmos said in a statement.
"In order to maintain the functioning of the ISS and the guaranteed presence at the station of at least one Roscosmos cosmonaut and at least one NASA astronaut, a draft agreement on the implementation of the agreement between the Roscosmos State Corporation and NASA on the organization of cross-flights of integrated crews on a barter basis has been developed and agreed with NASA," the state corporation reported.
Roscosmos and NASA plan to carry out at least one joint flight per year from 2022 to 2024 as part of the "cross-flight" program, the head of the state corporation Dmitry Rogozin said in December in an interview with The New York Times.
Since 2011, the delivery of crews to the ISS was carried out only by Russian ships, before that there was a "cross" system, according to which American astronauts received seats on Russian ships, and Russian cosmonauts - on American ones. In 2020, NASA reported that they were negotiating with Roscosmos on the return of the crossover system.
On November 17, 2020, the executive director of Roscosmos for manned programs, Sergey Krikalev, told Interfax that Roscosmos and NASA had reached an agreement in principle on the resumption of "cross-over" flights, the text of the agreement is being coordinated in the government of the Russian Federation.
"There is a fundamental agreement. There are not even so much technical as documentary problems. Since this is a barter scheme, coordination is underway at the government level: documents are being prepared, words are being clarified, a normal working process is underway," Krikalev said on December 17.
On the same day, Maxim Kharlamov, head of the Cosmonaut Training Center (CPC), told Interfax that the CPC had selected four candidates to prepare for flights on the American Crew Dragon ship.
On December 20, NASA's ISS program manager Joel Montalbano announced that Russian cosmonauts are already being trained to fly on the Crew Dragon spacecraft in the United States.
On December 8, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced that Anna Kikina, the only woman in the Roscosmos cosmonaut squad, could become the first Russian cosmonaut to fly to the ISS on the American Crew Dragon ship as part of cross-flights.
