The US administration has cancelled its plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 and decided to close NASA's lunar program, called Constellation, NASA's Chief Charles Bolden told the head of the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos Anatoly Perminov in a phone conversation.
Director of space agency Roskosmos' Manned Flight Programmes, Alexei Krasnov told reporters that instead of implementing the lunar program the US partners had decided to focus on developing "building blocks" for future deep space exploration as well as partnerships with private industry. He said that NASA now plans to prolong the running of its segment of the International Space Station (ISS) till 2020. He added that legally it will be confirmed in March during the meeting of heads of the space agencies of all countries participants in the ISS program.
Charles Bolden also informed Roskosmos that NASA had decided to cancel the design and the construction of the new Orion spacecraft, carrier-missiles Apec-1 and Apec-V which was envisaged by the lunar program. Instead of financing these projects from the state budget the US government plans to hand these projects to private firms. Earlier NASA transferred the construction of cargo spacecraft to private companies.
Krasnov said that the US plans to invest in industries and to boost the development of commercial vehicles which will be operated within the ISS program and also used for space tourism. He reminded that two US companies have been working for several years already on new transport spacecraft to deliver US cargos to the ISS. A test launch of the commercial cargo spacecraft is to take place in the end of the year, he added. When asked whether Russia should follow the US example and stop the financing of the construction of the new manned spacecraft and to give it to the private sector, Krasnov said that the new space initiatives of the US is a signal to all countries participants in the ISS program. "It has been proved that the plan of George Bush Juniour's administration to carry our the lunar program in terms of costs was unfeasible even for such a developed economy as the US".
Krasnov said however that the changes of the priorities in the US space program won't influence the Russian space industry. "This initiative may affect only one thing - the operation of the ISS will be prolonged till 2020. We have always supported this idea and thought that it was too early to stop the operation of the station in 2015," he stressed.
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