MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Manned flights to the International Space Station (ISS) under an ultra-fast three-hour scheme involving circling the Earth twice, will begin in a year and a half, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, said on Sunday.
“We are planning to repeat the launch of the Progress cargo spacecraft in an ultra-short two-rotation scheme next March. The flight time is three hours. In a year and a half, we will deliver cosmonauts and space tourists to the ISS faster than a flight from Moscow to Brussels,” Rogozin wrote on Twitter.
Rogozin also confirmed information, provided earlier to Sputnik by a source, that the next cargo spacecraft would be launched on March 28 under an ultra-fast scheme.
For decades, spaceships with crew and cargo typically flew for about 50 hours before reaching the ISS. In 2013, Russia introduced a six-hour route to the International Space Station, consisting of four orbits.
The Progress MS-09 spacecraft was first launched to the ISS under the three-hour scheme in July.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
