Roscosmos Not Ruling Out Flying Cosmonauts On US Ships After SpaceX Crewed Mission Launch

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 31st May, 2020) Russian cosmonauts may one day fly to the International Space Station (ISS) on US-made spacecraft, spokesman of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Vladimir Ustimenko told Sputnik on Sunday after SpaceX successfully lifted off its first manned mission from the United States.

On Saturday, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, was successfully launched from the Florida space center, putting the Dragon module on its way toward the ISS. The docking with the ISS is set for Sunday.

The launch of the Crew Dragon is the first manned launch by the US since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

"It all is being discussed while planning further cooperation," Ustimenko said, adding that the US astronauts will still continue to fly on Russian spacecraft.

Earlier this year, the head of Russia's Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center, Pavel Vlasov, told Sputnik that a group of Russian cosmonauts, including Andrei Borisenko, was selected for flights to the ISS on new US manned ships.