MOSCOW. June 10 (Interfax-AVN) - The main idea of the Friday meeting between Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) Anatoly Perminov and his European counterpart Jean Jacques Dordain was to form concrete suggestions in terms of space partnership between the sides, Roskosmos press service chief Vyacheslav Davidenko told Interfax-Military News Agency.
He said that it is possible that the detailed plan of cooperation between Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA) may well be included into the unified European space program to be adopted in late 2005 as a separate section.
The sides noted that specialists of the two agencies did a lot of work in the past year to prepare the main provisions of the ESA-Roskosmos space cooperation plan. "The paper may be a real road map of our cooperation in the near and long-term future," Davidenko said.
According to him, the joint efforts of Roskosmos and the ESA have resulted in the fact that a reliable international legal base has almost been formed to be the groundwork of the Russian-European strategic partnership in space. "For instance, the ESA and Roskosmos cooperation in human spaceflight has strengthened lately and is likely to transform into a real partnership soon," he said.
Perminov said during the meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of the European Union approved of four road maps determining the strategy of future common European spaces of Russia and the EU during the meeting in Moscow on May 10, 2005. In one of these areas, namely the common European economic space of Russia and the EU, outer space projects are summed into a separate section.
"Our agencies have always been focused on practical work, and therefore we are doing best to put all plans in action as soon as possible," Perminov said.
ESA involvement into the Clipper project was also discussed during the meeting.