MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — The Chief Medical Commission meeting was held at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) to analyze medical examination data of the cosmonauts and the spaceflight participants of the 20th visiting expedition to the International Space Station. The Commission consisted of the representatives of GCTC, Roscosmos, Federal Medico-Biological Agency, Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Ministry of Health and Russian Ministry […]

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

The International Astronautical Congress wrapped up last week in Dubai. Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and Glavkosmos boss Dmitry Loskutov held forth during the conference on SpaceX, space tourism and other topics.

Roscosmos is the state-owned corporation that runs Russia’s space program. Glavkosmos is Roscosmos’ commercial arm.

Cosmonauts to fly on Crew Dragon: Rogozin said SpaceX’s Crew Dragon now has enough flights under its belt for Russian cosmonauts to fly aboard it. Crew Dragon has flown three crews to the International Space Station (ISS) and a group of amateur astronauts on a three-day orbital flight. Roscosmos and NASA will pursue a barter agreement that will allow U.S. astronauts to fly on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Before Crew Dragon began flights, NASA was paying Roscosmos $90 million per seat to fly its astronauts to ISS.

Space Adventures says it was forced to cancel a reservation with SpaceX to send four paying passengers on a multi-day tourist trip to Earth orbit. Agence France-Presse reports: “Ultimately our reservation with SpaceX expired and that’s not a mission that we are going to be executing in the immediate future,” Shelley said, but did not rule out future partnerships with the company. Space Adventures was not about to work out […]

The Russian government has allocated $60.6 million (4.4 billion rubles) to the Roscosmos subsidiary Glavkosmos to produce a Soyuz 2.1a rocket and Soyuz MS spacecraft for a space tourism flight scheduled for 2024, according to Space Daily. Glavkosmos head Dmitry Loskutov said in May that the company was already in talks with potential space tourists and was simultaneously working on putting together a reserve of Soyuz spaceships to make the […]

The Japanese billionaire and his assistant are heading to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz ship in December. Maezawa has also booked a trip around the moon aboard SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for himself a group of people he’s taking with him.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Roscosmos General Director Dmitry Rogozin has said that Russia will extend cosmonaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from six to 12 months in order to gather data needed for missions to the moon and Mars.

“We are talking about stable operations that will be carried out as part of yearly expeditions. Now this will be placed on a systemic basis with the corresponding system of biomedical researches. Year-long expeditions are what we need,” Rogozin said.

Well, that sounds good. Far sighted, even visionary. That’s what makes it so odd; these are not words normally associated with the Roscosmos boss. Something else seems to be going on here.

STAR CITY, Russia, June 15, 2021 (Roscosmos PR) — At the Yu.A. Gagarin, on June 15, 2021, the participants of the visiting expedition’s space flight were presented to the management and staff of the Center.

By the decision of the interdepartmental commission for the selection of cosmonauts for the VC-20 crews as space flight participants, the main crew were appointed:

• Yusaku Maezawa, president of Start Today Corporation, businessman.
• Yozo Hirano, producer, personal assistant to Maezawa Yusaku.
• Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin became the commander of the prime crew.
• Back-up crew commander – Alexander Skvortsov.
• Shun Ogiso, Public Relations Manager of Start Today Corporation, will also take part in the training.