Russia wants to restart space flights with US | Abroad

Interfax news agency reported that a new contract is being prepared for flights to the ISS in 2024 and 2025. Moscow had previously said it would end cooperation with the US in space.

The ISS is one of the few places where the two countries continue to work together after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For example, on Friday, US astronaut Laurel O’Hara’s space mission began aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that also carried two Russian cosmonauts, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. The spacecraft arrived at the ISS on Friday evening.

There they will join the existing team of NASA astronauts Jasmine Mokbeli and Frank Rubio, Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petalin, Konstantin Borisov and Sergei Prokofiev, Dane Andreas Mogensen and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa.

Due to strained relations between the two countries, Russia recently announced that it will end cooperation after 2024 and build its own space station. But because it takes years to build a space station, Moscow later announced it would consider staying on the ISS until 2028.

Russia’s space program suffered a major blow last month when the Luna-25 spacecraft crashed while trying to land on the moon. It was the first Russian moon landing in 47 years.