China News Service, July 16. According to Reuters, NASA and Roscosmos announced on the 15th that they had signed an agreement to integrate and coordinate flights to the International Space Station and allow Russian astronauts to fly on board. American-made spacecraft in exchange for American astronauts to ride on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Data map: At 7:05 am Eastern Time on April 24, 2021, four astronauts aboard the SpaceX manned "Dragon" spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station.
This is the first-ever spaceflight mission using a recovered manned spacecraft.
The picture shows the astronauts in the space station taking a group photo.
"This agreement is in the interests of Russia and the United States and will promote the development of cooperation within the framework of the International Space Station program," Roscosmos reportedly said in a statement.
The first coordinated flight under the new agreement will take place in September, NASA said, with American astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Petrin (Dmitry Petelin) traveled to the International Space Station from the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
In exchange, Russian astronaut Anna Kikina will join two U.S. astronauts and a Japanese astronaut aboard the Dragon spacecraft, which is expected to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.