Article Posted on : - Apr 06, 2010

An artist's conception of a futuristic spaceship.

MOSCOW (BNS): Russia has proposed to design a spaceship in partnership with foreign countries that will explore the deep space and make the International Space Station its base.

The small spaceship will fly beyond the low earth orbit (LEO) and make the ISS its platform after returning from exploring deep cosmic objects which could be either the lunar orbit or an asteroid, Alexey Krasnov, Head of Roscosmos Human Space Flight Directorate, said.

Russia put forth the proposal in this regard during a meeting of the heads of space agencies in Tokyo.

“The partner countries have expressed their interest to this cooperative initiative,” Krasnov said.

Russia plans to build the new spaceship by 2020.

“Technical objective of the project is still to be defined by Russian engineers, together with their foreign colleagues, probably…Russian space programme implies development of an orbital integration and experimental facility in 2020-2030,” Krasnov said.