Roscosmos Chief Denies Reported Talks With SpaceX On Sending Russian Cosmonauts To ISS

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th April, 2021) Russian State Space Corporation Director General Dmitry Rogozin refuted on Sunday media reports about alleged negotiations between the space agency and SpaceX on sending Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on board the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

The reports came as the joint mission between NASA and SpaceX successfully launched earlier this week the Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts aboard to the ISS and avoided colliding with an unknown object. The astronauts successfully boarded the station on Saturday.

"No, we are not [involved in such negotiations. Why? We have our own spacecraft," Rogozin wrote on Twitter.

Last year after SpaceX made history by flying people to the ISS on the world's first commercially-made spacecraft, dubbed Crew Dragon, Roscosmos' representative in Kazakhstan, Anatoly Krasnikov, said that the space agencies of Russia and the US were negotiating the prospects of the mutual provision of seats in both countries' spacecraft for flights to the ISS.

According to NASA, since 2006, the United States has purchased 72 seats in Soyuz spacecraft from Russia for a total of over $4 billion to transport US, European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts to the station and back to Earth. During this time, the cost of one flight for them increased from $20 million to $90 million.