MOSCOW. May 15 (Interfax) - A space tourist may take part in the first manned flight to the International Space Station (ISS) powered by a new Russian rocket in 2019, a source in the aerospace industry told Interfax.
"The Soyuz MS-15 spaceship will be the first launched with a Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket. There will be two Russian cosmonauts on board. A space tourist may take the third seat," the source said.
The flight is scheduled to take place in October 2019 if the unmanned mission of the Soyuz MS-14 spaceship coupled with a Soyuz-2.1a rocket next August is successful.
There are several candidates interested in visiting the ISS, and some of them are Russian. Representatives of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates "who can be described as tourists only formally" could go to the ISS later on a longer mission.
"They will most likely visit the ISS in 2020 instead of 2019 and use a different spaceship. The representatives of the Arab countries will take a full course of astronaut training in their home countries and in Russia. If they go on a mission, they will be fulfilling every duty of a crewmember and become the first astronauts of their countries," the source said.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Russian aerospace industry are continuing negotiations with the U.S. on the exchange of manned spaceship seats.
"If the agreement on trading seats is concluded, the seat may go to an American astronaut in exchange for seats onboard the U.S. manned spaceships Starliner or Dragon. There have been no manned missions of those spaceships yet," the source said.