MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Over the past twenty years, 239 astronauts and cosmonauts have been taken to the ISS during 85 manned flights of Russia’s Soyuz and US Space Shuttle.
The US government has paid Russia nearly $4 billion to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) via its Soyuz rockets since July, a report, compiled by the NASA Inspector General Paul Martin, said.
The report also stipulates that the United States will likely be forced to reduce the number of its ISS crew, since new space flight systems are not ready yet.
As a result, US astronauts will focus on ISS maintenance instead of experiments and research, NASA suggested.
As the Space Shuttle program was terminated in 2011, the US lost its ability to arrange manned ISS flights on its own. Since 2014, private companies SpaceX and Boeing have been constructing manned spacecraft under a contract with NASA, but the deadline for their commissioning has not been set yet. NASA is currently mulling over buying seats aboard Russia’s Soyuz in 2020.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
