WASHINGTON, February 15. /TASS corr. Vladislav Pavlov/. Russian spacecrafts "Soyuz" have a "tremendous benefit" for operating the International Space Station, and can be useful as a backup transportation system for lunar exploration, a NASA spokesperson told TASS on Thursday.
"NASA is leading development of an open architecture to enable sustainable lunar exploration. Working with commercial and international partners to go forward to the Moon will lay the foundation for human exploration of Mars and beyond," the spokesperson said. "Russian transportation systems have been a tremendous benefit for operating the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit. While discussions are in early stages, dissimilar redundancy and a back-up transportation capability could be advantageous for lunar exploration," she added, commenting on the statement of Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin on the development of a lunar version of the Soyuz spacecraft for NASA.
On Thursday, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine informed during a round table in Washington that the US lunar exploration project would include not only the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, but also the infrastructure connecting the Earth with the Moon. The NASA head added that all international partners are welcome to participate in the project.
On January 10, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with Rossiya-24 TV Channel that NASA had requested Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos to develop the Soyuz spacecraft version for flights to the Moon.
"They are requesting us to develop the Soyuz spacecraft that could fly to the Moon and back to create a backup space transport system," Rogozin said.
The US has earlier announced its Deep Space Gateway program with international participation, which envisages building a lunar-orbit space station to receive spacecrafts from the Earth on a regular basis. In his earlier interview with TASS, Rogozin said Russia would participate in this program only on the parity basis.
Russia also runs its own lunar program. The first stage of it envisages the launch of unmanned missions, followed by manned orbital missions with subsequent moon landing and the creation of a lunar base.
