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Dutchman May Fly To Iss On Russian Spacecraft After Spaniard

Posted on: Monday, 23 June 2003, 06:00 CDT

MOSCOW. June 23 (Interfax) - A draft contract for the flight of Andre Kuipers, a Dutch astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA), to the International Space Station (ISS) has been approved, spokesman for the Russian Aviation and Space Agency Sergei Gorbunov told Interfax on Monday.

"The text of Kuipers's flight contract has been initialed and the technical chiefs of the projects have signed it. So far this is a tentative contract signing," he said.

"A full text of the contract [does exist] but there remain a number of questions that still have to be clarified, namely the scientific program of the flight needs to be determined," Gorbunov said.

A contract for the flight of another ESA astronaut, Pedro Duque, was signed at the end of May. Duque will fly to the ISS in October with crewmembers of Expedition Eight Alexander Kaleri and Michael Foale and return to Earth with Expedition Seven (Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu).

On the ISS, the ESA astronauts will perform preparatory operations for the receipt of the first European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). In addition to staging several scientific experiments, they will install equipment for docking the ATV with the station.

"The question of ESA astronauts participating in long-term expeditions has not been raised so far," Gorbunov said.

Commercial space flights bring additional financial resources to the Russian space program. Experts say Russia will be incapable of fulfilling its commitments to build the ISS without energetically advancing a new sphere of commercial operations - space tourism and commercial flights of ESA astronauts. Each flight of an ESA astronaut brings Russia some $12 million.

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