NASA has refused to buy a seat on the Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz MS, which would be used in the spring of 2021 to send an American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS). This follows from the report of “Roskosmos” for 2019.
“At the beginning of 2020, the American side announced its readiness to purchase services for the delivery of only one astronaut in the fall of 2020: conditions are currently being discussed, the modification project is being adjusted,” the document says.
However, as RIA Novosti notes, in December 2019, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin announced his decision to provide NASA with one seat for Soyuz MS-18, which is to launch to the ISS in April 2021. Now, as follows from the state corporation report, NASA does not need to buy seats on the Soyuz MS after 2020.
On May 30, a heavy rocket Falcon 9 was launched with the Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying American astronauts on board to the ISS. The previous time the United States independently delivered people to low-earth orbit on July 8, 2011, when the Space Shuttle Atlantis reusable manned spacecraft took off. After that, the US used Russian Soyuz series spacecraft to send people to the ISS.
In March 2019, the scientific director of the Institute of Space Policy, Ivan Moiseyev, said that the loss by Roscosmos of the monopoly on the delivery of people to the ISS would significantly hit the financial performance of the state corporation.
