The Russian and the US space agencies have agreed to cooperate on jointly sending crews to the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2025, according to the Russian agency, Roscosmos.

The so-called cross-flights — which involve sending one US astronaut as part of the crew of a Russian spacecraft and one Russian cosmonaut as part of an American crew — were extended "to maintain the reliability of the ISS operation," Roscosmos said.

Rare US-Russian cooperation

The space sector is one of the few areas remaining in which Moscow and Washington have continued to work together since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  

In its statement, Roscosmos also said it aims "to guarantee the presence of at least one representative of Roscosmos on the Russian segment and the presence of at least one representative of NASA on the American segment."

The United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan have so far only undertaken to keep the orbiting laboratory in operation until 2024, though the US says it wants to keep going to 2030.

Russia, for its part, said in April that it wanted to stay involved till 2028, after earlier saying it would quit after 2024.

The ISS, which was designed to perform microgravity and space environment experiments, orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles). It needs just some 93 minutes to circle the globe, completing 15.5 orbits per day. 

tj/rc (AFP, Reuters)