Article Posted on : - Jan 22, 2009

ISS photo from Boeing

MOSCOW (BNS): No space tourist will be permitted to the International Space Station (ISS) after 2009 as its crew grows from three to six, the Russian space agency director announced on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Russian daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Roscosmos director Anatoly Perminov said that the last commercial flight would be made in March 2009 by Charles Simoniy, who would be making his second trip, and by a Kazakh national in the fall of 2009.

Roscosmos director said that Moscow would not cancel any space launches slated for 2009 due to global financial crisis. “I hope that we’ll cope. So far we are preparing to make four manned launches, not two, as previously planned, and send five, not four, freight modules into space,” Perminov said.

Elaborating on the projects handled by Russia for ISS, Perminov said that they included a total of 156 projects, 19 of which have already been completed.

Earlier, Roscosmos had said that a Russian space tourist would make way for a Kazakh cosmonaut to the ISS in the autumn of 2009.