MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) - The Roscosmos state corporation will be developing space tourism after NASA stops using Russian spacecraft services to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), Roscosmos First Deputy General Director for Economy and Finance Maxim Ovchinnikov said.
"Speaking of NASA, the Americans are developing two piloted spacecraft of their own, which means they will stop using our services and they are already doing so," Ovchinnikov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.
NASA will keep buying seats on Russian spacecraft in the near future as Plan B for transporting their astronauts to the ISS, he said.
"They [NASA] have new transportation systems, and they are testing the entire technology and its technicalities. There may be problems with the periodicity, timeframe and rhythmicity of transportation of cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station," Ovchinnikov said.
"Being aware of the problems we may encounter if the American partners reject our services, we are doing everything we can to cut costs and to raise efficiency, including that of the piloted spacecraft, in order to increase the number of tourists and demand from other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, India and, possibly, Turkey," he said.
"As for tourists, we are stepping up this kind of activity. Hopefully, we will be able to generate a substantial flow from this activity soon enough," Ovchinnikov said.
ISS crews have been traveling only by Russian spacecraft since 2011, and seats on Russian and U.S. spacecraft were exchanged before that. NASA said in 2020 it was negotiating the reinstatement of seat exchanges with Roscosmos.
NASA astronauts reached the ISS on board the U.S. Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time in 2020. It was announced that the United States would stop buying Soyuz seats after the commissioning of national spaceships, but another seat was purchased on board Soyuz MS-18, to travel to the ISS in April, at the beginning of 2021.
According to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin, NASA had purchased the seat because of low reliability of U.S. spacecraft.
Rogozin said on March 17 the state corporation had received a number of orders for transporting crewmembers to the ISS upon the end of its cooperation program with NASA.