An agreement was signed between the U.S. NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agencies to share flights to the International Space Station, allowing Russian cosmonauts and U.Ss astronauts to fly on each other’s spacecraft. “The agreement is in the interests of Russia and the United States and will promote the development of cooperation within the framework of the ISS program,” Roscosmos said in a statement, according to Reuters, which added that it will facilitate the “exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes.”
NASA said the first integrated flights under the new agreement will come in September, when U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio will travel on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft alongside two cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin. This will be followed by cosmonaut Anna Kikina traveling with two U.S. astronauts and a Japanese astronaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Kikina, will be the first Russian to fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule for which she has been training at NASA’s astronaut headquarters in Houston.
