Russian, European space agency heads discuss Mars, lunar projects
MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax-AVN) - Federal Space Agency head Oleg Ostapenko and European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain have discussed cooperation in Mars and Moon research programs.
"The chiefs of the agencies exchanged opinions on further cooperation in the ExoMars project and possible areas of cooperation in automatic lunar research projects and summed up intermediate results of interaction in manned programs," says a report of the Roscosmos press service obtained by Interfax-AVN on Wednesday.
The Roscosmos and ESA heads scheduled a number of working meetings for this year.
Ostapenko also had a meeting with Arianespace President - General Director Stephane Israel.
"After making a brief review of Arianespace operations, the heads of Roscosmos and Arianespace discussed progress on current projects and a number of prospective bilateral cooperation plans," the report said.
The Roscosmos head met with executives of some of the leading European rocket and space companies in Paris.
It was reported earlier that Roscosmos and Arianespace had initialed an agreement on the additional delivery of seven Soyuz-ST launch vehicles for missions from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana, South America.