Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos will agree to the delivery of its cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a US Crew Dragon spacecraft only after it is certified, Roscosmos First Deputy Head for the Orbital Grouping Development and Priority Projects Yuri Urlichich said on Thursday.

“The spaceship has not passed its certification and the Americans are offering us to make swaps as was the case during the period when their shuttles made flights: our cosmonauts flew in their shuttles and their astronauts on our Soyuz spacecraft. We agree to that but only inasmuch as their spaceship is certified,” Urlichich said in the upper house of Russia’s parliament.

As the Roscosmos official pointed out, “there are still some questions there.”

“And there has not been any successful return with astronauts so far,” he stressed.

The Crew Dragon was successfully launched atop a Falcon 9 carrier rocket from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) in late May.

Header: A SpaceX Falcon 9, with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken in the Dragon crew capsule, lifts off from Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, May 30, 2020. The two astronauts are on the SpaceX test flight to the International Space Station. For the first time in nearly a decade, astronauts blasted towards orbit aboard an American rocket from American soil, a first for a private company. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

Source: TASS