Roscosmos Confirms NASA Plans To Buy 2 More Seats On Soyuz For US Astronauts

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th April, 2019) Roscosmos and NASA are discussing the contract which will allow the United States to buy two additional seats on Russia's Soyuz to fly US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), Sergey Krikalev, the Roscosmos director for manned spaceflights, told Sputnik.

According to a solicitation notice posted on US Federal procurement website, NASA is going to buy two more seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to deliver US astronauts to the ISS in 2019 and in 2020. The move is guided by the necessity to take US astronauts to the ISS in case Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX' Crew Dragon malfunction during tests.

"There have been talks [on the issue], the procedures of negotiating the documents are underway now," Krikalev said.