Russia may deploy its own orbiting station in 2017-2019 - newspaper
MOSCOW. Nov 17 (Interfax) - Russia may begin the deployment of its own orbiting station in 2017, Kommersant wrote on Monday.
"The launch of a Russian high-latitude orbiting station is a major proposal made in the draft program for manned space projects in the period until 2050," Kommersant claimed.
The station may be put into orbit in 2017-2019, it added.
According to the newspaper, "the initial configuration [of the station] will consist of a multipurpose laboratory module, a node module and the OKA-T spacecraft. Soyuz-MS and Progress-MS spaceships will support the station's operations, and power and transformer modules of the lunar program may be developed in 2020-2024."
However, this does not mean that the International Space Station (ISS) project will be shut down ahead of time. Moscow is determined to honor its international commitments until 2020, the newspaper stressed.
Space industry sources explained the logic of the national space station project to Kommersant.
"The new station will take a geometrically advantageous position and have a broader field of vision of the Earth's surface. The station crew will see up to 90% of the Russian territory and the Arctic shelf; the indicator is smaller than 5% for the ISS," the source told Kommersant.
Another mission of the prospective station is the testing of manned elements of lunar program infrastructure, the sources said."In fact, it would be sort of a platform which the spacecraft would reach before they continued their progress to the Moon," they said.