MOSCOW. April 8 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia will remain the only country capable of delivering crews to the International Space Station (ISS) in this decade, Alexei Krasnov, the chief of the manned spaceflight programs at the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), told Interfax-AVN.
"We discussed this issue with our American partners at the Baikonur space center. They say that the recent budget sequestration will damage the development of commercial projects first of all. They do not rule out that their space vehicles will be ready to deliver crews to the ISS later than was planned. The end of 2017 is no longer being mentioned," he said.
After the U.S. stopped operating its space shuttles, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft is currently the only vehicle capable of delivering crews to the station, he said.
Asked whether Russian cosmonauts could fly to space on board U.S. commercial spacecraft, similar to the way foreign astronauts fly on board Soyuzes, Krasnov said, "We do not rule out any options of crew composition."
"One of the options is our cosmonaut in their crew and their [astronaut] in ours. Such crew composition has certain benefits," he said.