NASA says working with Roscosmos on extending ISS cross-flights program beyond 2025

BAIKONUR. Sept 12 (Interfax) - NASA and the Roscosmos state space corporation are working on extending the agreements on cross-flights to the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2025, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations Kenneth Bowersox said.

As for the cross flights, work is yet to be finalized regarding the documents that will make it possible to continue the program after the spring of 2025, Bowersox told journalists on Wednesday.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-26 manned spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome earlier on Wednesday. The crew aboard the Soyuz MS-26 consists of Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit.

Pettit is traveling to the ISS under the Russian-U.S. agreement to integrate flights to the space station.

In July 2022, Roscosmos and NASA signed an agreement under the ISS program on cross-flights of three Russian cosmonauts on the U.S. Crew Dragon crewed spacecraft and three U.S. astronauts on Russia's Soyuz MS crewed spacecraft in 2022-2024.

In December 2023, Roscosmos said that the Russian-U.S. ISS cross-flights agreement was extended until 2025. The supplementary agreement envisaged two more joint flights to the ISS before 2025, Roscosmos Human Space Program Executive Director Sergei Krikalev told Interfax.