NASA is planning in 2017 to abandon its astronauts flying on the Russian "Soyuz" - ITAR-TASS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14. / Correspondent. ITAR-TASS Ivan Lebedev /. NASA plans about three and a half years to completely abandon the Russian Space Agency to deliver services to its astronauts to the International Space Station / ISS /. As reported on Wednesday, the U.S. space agency director Charles Bolden, a new American manned spacecraft must make its first flight to the ISS in 2017. Until that time, international crews will continue to get to the space station on Russian “Soyuz”.

Experts estimate that over the past years, the U.S. paid Russia for a place on such a ship for about $ 65 million. A current agreement between NASA and the Russian Space Agency on the use of “union” to deliver U.S. astronauts to the ISS is calculated as the time until the middle of 2017. Representatives of the U.S. space agency, and earlier said that by this time will have their own vehicle, which will replace the “shuttles”, laid up in 2011.

Now Bolden officially announced that on November 19 NASA is now accepting applications from commercial firms for the construction of a new manned spacecraft, which is expected, in particular, used to fly to the ISS. The program will be on a public-private partnership, and about half financed from the state budget. Their participation in it have already confirmed the company SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, the heads of which were present in NASA’s Bolden’s speech.

cargo ship Dragon

in 2012-2013 carried out by SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched twice to the ISS the world’s only reusable cargo ship Dragon. Under a contract with NASA in the amount of $ 1.6 billion, he must go to the station with supplies for the crew of another 10 times. In turn, Orbital Sciences launched in September to the orbital complex cargo ship Cygnus, descended into space carrier “Antares”. Under a contract with NASA in the amount of 1.9 billion dollars he will make in the next three years, eight more rendezvous with the station.

How

Bolden said, this program has provided the United States own cargo space ship and now “begins its new phase, involving contracts with U.S. companies to transport astronauts.” SpaceX and Orbital Sciences have already started to develop a manned version of their “trucks” that will be used to deliver crews to the ISS, and possibly for other space travel.

In addition, the corporation “Lockheed Martin” developing a new manned spacecraft ‘Orion’ and other aerospace giant Boeing plans to ensure that it is a heavy bearer of SLS. According to the plans of NASA, in the future they will be used for deep-space missions, including to asteroids and Mars. The development of this system, as well as other ships manned U.S. space agency plans to spend in the 2014 fiscal year, $ 2.7 billion.