No Formal Agreement, Bolden Non-Committal

Reports coming out of Russia would indicate that Roscosmos and NASA are already discussing a space station that would eventually take the place of ISS, though U.S. officials are hardly definitive about the matter.

NBC News reports that the comments came after the launch Friday of a U.S. astronaut and Russian Cosmonaut who will be spending an entire year aboard the station. The state-owned Vesti.ru website quoted Roscosmos head Igor Komarov as saying that the U.S. and Russia would be beginning work on a new space station, which would be an "open project" that "will feature not only the current members of the ISS."

However NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who did have discussion with Komarov in conjunction with Friday's launch, said only that he knows the existing station will one day reach the end of its useful life. But, he said, "there are some areas that are better-suited to commercial companies."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitri Rogozin said in a tweet that the Russian Government would "examine the results of the talks."

In its official response to the Russian news reports, NASA said "We are pleased Roscosmos wants to continue full use of the International Space Station through 2024 — a priority of ours — and expressed interest in continuing international cooperation for human space exploration beyond that. The United States is planning to lead a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, and we have advanced that effort farther than at any point in NASA's history. We welcome international support for this ambitious undertaking. Today we remain focused on full use of our current science laboratory in orbit and research from the exciting one-year mission astronaut Scott Kelly just began, which will help prepare us for longer duration spaceflight."

(Image from file)

FMI: www.nasa.gov