The Director General of Roscosmos said that the mission will be implemented by Russia independently or with the participation of China
MOSCOW, February 26. /tass/. The US participation in the Venus-D joint project with Roscosmos may be excluded due to the sanctions imposed by the United States affecting the Russian space industry. This was announced to TASS by the Director General of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin on Saturday.
"Under the conditions of sanctions, US participation in the project is impossible," Rogozin said.
According to the Director General of Roscosmos, the mission will be implemented by Russia independently or with the participation of China. He clarified that on Friday he instructed to start negotiations with Beijing on the coordination and mutual technical support of all deep space exploration missions.
Earlier, Rogozin said that due to US sanctions, joint projects similar to the Spektr-RG observatory are impossible.
On February 25, US President Joe Biden said that the sanctions of the United States and its allies will hit the high-tech sector of the Russian Federation, as well as its space program. According to him, the United States will block more than half of high-tech imports to Russia. Biden stressed that this would harm, among other things, Russia's space program. In turn, the head of Roscosmos said that Russia, despite the US sanctions, will continue to make spacecraft, deploying the production of necessary components and devices at home.
In mid-May 2020, the scientific director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lev Zeleny, told TASS that a new program for the exploration of Venus will be developed in the Russian Federation, including the dispatch of at least three scientific vehicles. According to the scientist, the first expedition under the program will be "Venus-D", the launch of which is scheduled for the end of the 2020s. The previous comprehensive Venus research program was implemented in the USSR.
