NASA close to finalising cross flights to space station with Roscosmos: Report

The US is in the final steps of finalising the agreement of cross flights to the International Space Station (ISS) with Russia. This revelation was made by Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS Deputy Program Manager, during a Wednesday media briefing ahead of SpaceX's resupply ISS mission. "We're hopeful that we're pretty close to finalizing the agreement. It is in the final stages of review at both NASA and Roscosmos", Weigel said during the briefing as per TASS news. 

This comes a few weeks after Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos, revealed that Russia's only female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, will be sent on an ISS mission in an American spacecraft. She is currently training in the US and will be a part of the NASA-SpaceX Crew-5 mission targeted for launch on September 1.

Notably, this agreement involves sending a Russian cosmonaut in an American spacecraft in return for an American astronaut's trip to the space station in a Russian capsule. Following Kikina's launch with SpaceX, NASA astronaut Fransico Rubio will be sent in Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, and as per Weigel, he is already training with a Russian crew.

Significance of the mission

The agreement between NASA and Roscosmos was signed before Russia launched an attack on Ukraine. The Crew-5 mission becomes significant as it would bring the two parties together for collaboration over a mission while Roscosmos is cutting ties with major space agencies. Russia has already ousted the US from the Venus mission it was planning and the last instance of NASA-Roscosmos cooperation was during the return of American astronaut Mark Vande Hei in a Soyuz capsule this April. 

Moreover, Crew-5 would make Kikina the fifth female Russian cosmonaut to have visited space. Valentina Tereshkova was the first Russian woman to reach space on June 16, 1963, followed by Svetlana Savitskaya, who became the first female cosmonaut to carry out a spacewalk. She was followed by Elena Serova and Russian actress Yulia Peresild, who along with filmmaker Klim Shipenko travelled to the space station to shoot the first movie in space.