MOSCOW. May 29 (Interfax) - Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft in September 2023 and will return to Earth on board Soyuz MS-25 in the fall of 2024, Roscosmos said on Monday.
"Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will stay on the station until September 2024, and will return aboard Soyuz MS-25. Therefore, Kononenko and Chub's ISS mission will last for a year," the state corporation's press service said.
Another member of the Soyuz MS-24 crew is NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara, who will return to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-24 in March 2024 along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and Belarusian cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya.
Roscosmos announced on March 24 that the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with a Russian-U.S. crew on board would lift off for the ISS on September 15, 2023.
NASA's O'Hara will fly to the ISS as part of the two countries' cross flights agreement.
Roscosmos said on March 1 that the Russia-U.S. agreement on integrated flights to the ISS had been expanded.
Roscosmos and NASA agreed an additional flight of a Russian cosmonaut to the ISS aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the state corporation said. It was reported that Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin would join the Crew-8 mission in the first half of 2024.
Under the cross flights agreement signed by Roscosmos and NASA in July 2022, three Russian cosmonauts will fly to the ISS aboard U.S. Crew Dragon spacecraft and three U.S. astronauts will travel to the station on Russia's Soyuz MS in 2022-2024.
Two ISS missions are currently in progress as part of the Roscosmos-NASA agreement. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio joined Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which was launched to the ISS in September 2022. They will return to Earth on Soyuz MS-23, which arrived at the station in February to replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22. Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyayev arrived at the ISS on board the U.S. Crew Dragon-6 in March.