NASA will buy from Roskosmos 6 places on the Soyuz for American astronauts

NASA is planning to purchase from Roskosmos an additional 6 places on the Russian Soyuz for flights on the ISS in 2018. The cost of one place reaches 75 million US dollars. Buying a place means both the delivery of an astronaut to the ISS and ensuring the return of the crew to Earth in 2019 in the spring.

Now the delivery of astronauts to the ISS is carried out only with the help of Russian spacecraft. The contract is calculated until the period when the United States will have its own spacecraft capable of delivering a team of astronauts to the ISS. Now the development of such ships are engaged in Boeing and SpaceX, which, in turn, received a contract from NASA for 3.5 billion US dollars.

Now the US is working with Russia only on the ISS project, all other areas of cooperation in the space sphere are either frozen or closed. As for the ISS, its operation is planned for the period up to 2024.