Russia plans to develop space tourism on its national space station - Roscosmos chief

MOSCOW. June 3 (Interfax) - Roscosmos is planning to send space tourists to the Russian space station currently under development, the state corporation's head Dmitry Bakanov said.

"Instead of the ISS [International Space Station] there will be a Russian space station where we are planning to develop tourist missions as well," Bakanov said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 (VGTRK) television channel on Tuesday.

Russia is creating the new station to replace the ISS. Its rollout is timed to coincide with the launch of a science and power module atop an Angara-A5M carrier rocket from Vostochny Cosmodrome in December 2027.

The initial stage (before 2030) will involve launching nodular and gateway modules and later a base module to function as a control station. The second stage will involve docking two other target modules in 2031-2033.

Russia is the pioneer of space tourism. Between 2001 and 2021 its Soyuz spaceships sent to orbit nine commercial flight participants, one of them twice.

The previous commercial flight to the ISS aboard a Soyuz MS was in December 2021. The tourists were Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano from Japan. They spent 12 days on the ISS.