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Russia cuts spending on servicing ISS by $400 million — media

The Izvestiya daily said that Russia is ready to spend around $360 million per year on servicing ISS

MOSCOW, January 11. /TASS/. Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos will cut spending on servicing the International Space Station (ISS) in 2016-2015 by almost 30 billion rubles, the Izvestiya daily reported on Monday.

Citing the final draft of the Federal Space Program (FSP) submitted by Roscosmos to ministries, the daily said that over the next decade Russia will allocate 252.1 billion rubles ($3.43 billion) for flight control, servicing the Russian segment of ISS and implementing a program of scientific experiments. Earlier FSP draft submitted in April last year envisaged spending 281.4 billion rubles ($3.82 billion) on the space program. The final draft was cut by almost a quarter to 1.521 trillion rubles ($21 billion) for the next 10 years.

The Izvestiya daily said that Russia is ready to spend around 26.8 billion rubles ($360 million) per year on servicing ISS. In spring of 2013, then-head of National Manned Spaceflight Center at Roscosmos Alexey Krasnov said that Russia will have to spend around $1 billion (at the exchange rate of 2013) annually on servicing ISS.

At the end of December last year, Roscosmos head Igor Komarov said that the first three years of financing the program will be limited to the level of 2016 - 104.5 billion rubles ($1.42 billion) annually. Total budget until 2021 will stand at 722.5 billion rubles ($9.82 billion).