The United States and the Russian space agencies have signed a long-awaited agreement to integrate flights to the International Space Station (ISS), allowing Russian cosmonauts to fly in US-made spacecraft in exchange for American astronauts being able to board Russia’s Soyuz. In a statement on Friday, Roscosmos said the agreement with NASA “is in the interests of Russia and the US and will promote the development of cooperation within the ISS program.” It will also facilitate “space exploration for peaceful purposes,” the Russian space agency said. NASA and Roscosmos, the space station’s two-decade-old key partners, have sought for years to renew daily full crew flights as part of their long-standing political alliance, now one of the last links of cooperation between the US and Russia as tensions flare over war in Ukraine. The first full flights under the new agreement will take place in September, NASA said, with US astronaut Frank Rubio launching to the space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan along with two cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin. In return, cosmonaut Anna Kikina will join two American astronauts and a Japanese astronaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight to the orbiting lab, launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The two agencies previously shared astronaut seats on the US space shuttle and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. After the shuttle was retired in 2011, the US relied on Russia’s Soyuz to send American astronauts to the space station until 2020, when SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule revived NASA’s human spaceflight capability and began routine ISS flights from Florida. Kikina, an engineer and the only woman in Russia’s active cosmonaut corps, is set to become the first Russian woman to fly in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. He trained for the mission at NASA’s astronaut headquarters in Houston while the deal was being negotiated. The US space agency has said that having at least one Russian and one American on the space station is vital to keeping the lab running. “Flying integrated crews ensure that there are properly trained crew members on the station for basic maintenance and spacewalks,” NASA said in a statement Friday. Shortly before the deal was announced, President Vladimir Putin replaced Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin with Yuri Borisov, a former deputy prime minister and deputy defense minister.
