Roscosmos to produce 4 Soyuz spaceships per year to develop space tourism

MOSCOW. Dec 16 (Interfax) - Roscosmos will scale up production of Soyuz piloted spaceships to four ships per year in order to develop space tourism, the corporation's press service said on Thursday.

"Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin has tasked the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation with drafting and presenting a plan to scale up production of Soyuz MS piloted spaceships in order to develop space tourism," the corporation said.

Rogozin said that space tourism allows Roscosmos to receive "real money that goes towards modernizing the rocket and space industry."

"I am tasking Energia Corp. with submitting a specific action plan to Roscosmos to scale up production and manufacture up to four piloted spaceships per year," the press service quoted Rogozin as saying.

Russia's obligation to transport foreign astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) expired with the beginning of flights of U.S. piloted spaceships, Rogozin said. "We are now able to send crews of three Russian cosmonauts to the station. The first crew of the kind will go to the ISS in spring," he said.

In recent years, Energia was annually building two Soyuz-MS ships for the federal space program and another two for transportation of foreign astronauts to the ISS under international contracts, Roscosmos said.

Russia was at the outset of space tourism projects. Nine space tourists traveled onboard Soyuz spaceships between 2001 and 2021, including one twice.