Soyuz: February 2009 Archives

credit CNES

The European Space Agency has profiled the work being done by Russia's Samara Space Center for the Soyuz 2-1a rockets that are planned to launch from French Space Agency CNES' French Guiana spaceport by the end of this year. Go through to the extended part of this blog post to see the 13min 54s video

more likely to happen than not based on an answer to a question I posed to Russia's Federal Space Agency (aka Roscosmos)

On 11 June 2008 Space Adventures announced an 'agreement' to have an entirely private flight to the International Space Station in 2011 - see Hyperbola's reaction here

But the following day Roscosmos put a statement on its website appearing to undermine that 2011 claim - see the translated statement here

At the Farnborough international air show I could not get a straight answer to a question about this private flight deal between Space Adventures was Roscosmos

Why were the company's Russian partners not so forthcoming when it would be easier to be so?

In a recent interview with a Russian newspaper, that was reported on by Russian newswire RIA Novosti, the head of Roscosmos Anatoly Perminov said that there would be no more tourist visits to the ISS after 2009

This apparent categorical statement of an end to ISS space tourism, full stop, only added to the sense that senior Roscosmos officials felt uncomfortable confirming the alleged agreement with Space Adventures

credit S P Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation / caption: Progress M66 is processed

I found a couple of Russian and Chinese items today. Energia has been posting photo reports of the progress, as it were, of the Progress M66 cargo resupply vehicle and at the Russian Federal Space Agency there are photos of a Proton rocket being prepared for its launch