MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th November, 2020) Russia could send a group of tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) on board the Russian Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft in early December of next year, according to a preliminary 2021 flight schedule drafted by the Russian Rocket and Space Corporation Energia.
The draft schedule, obtained by Sputnik, shows that the launch of a Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft with two tourists from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is planned for December 8, 2021. The return to Earth is set for December 20.
The Names of the tourists or the spacecraft crew are not mentioned.
In February 2019, Russian space agency Roscosmos and US-based company Space Adventures signed a contract to organize the flight of two space tourists to the ISS before the end of 2021.
Earlier, Sputnik obtained some files indicating that the launch of the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft with two tourists and a Russian cosmonaut as the crew commander was planned for December 2021.
Roscosmos and Space Adventures have been cooperating in space tourism since 2001, when the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, went into orbit. Since then, a total of seven people have been in space under the space tourism program.
