President of Roscosmos: willing to extend the Russian-American joint space flight agreement

Reference News Network reported on September 17 According to a report by Deutsche Presse on September 15, the head of the Russian National Space Group said on the 15th that he was willing to extend the agreement with the United States on joint flights to the International Space Station.

The report quoted Interfax as reporting that Yuri Borisov, president of Roscosmos, said that new agreements for joint spaceflight until 2024 and 2025 are being prepared. Moscow has previously said it will stop cooperation with the United States in the field of space.

Since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the International Space Station is one of the few areas in which Russia and the United States are still cooperating.

For example, American cosmonaut Laura O'Hara went into space with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Konoenko and Nikolai Chubb on the Soyuz spacecraft on September 15. As part of the agreement, the U.S. Space Shuttle will also carry American and Russian astronauts.

Due to extremely tense relations between the two countries in other areas, Russia recently announced that it will stop cooperation after 2024 and build its own orbital station. But because construction of the space station will take years, Moscow later said it was considering staying on the ISS until 2028. (Compilation/Yin Xia, He Guanghai)

U.S. cosmonaut O'Hara (left), Russian cosmonaut Konoenko (center) and Chubb go to the launch pad side by side at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, September 15. (Reuters)