ADELAIDE/Australia/, September 25. /TASS/. Russia and the United States are not planning to curtail bilateral space cooperation and there is no decision on sinking the International Space Station now, a senior official at the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Sergey Krikalev, told reporters on Monday.
"The statements on possibly making the Russian segment of the ISS an independent station have been heard amid the US plans to sink the ISS. If the US takes a decision on sinking the station, then we will take some measures for our part. There has been no such decision so far," Krikalev, who is Roscosmos Executive Director for Manned Space Programs, told the International Astronautical Congress.
"Neither we nor the US side have been tasked to scale down cooperation," he stressed.
Specialists will consider various scenarios on the further fate of the ISS and choose the most efficient one, he said.
Roscosmos also plans to continue joint work with the US on the low earth orbit.
Russian cosmonauts may start getting seats in US manned spacecraft, and Roscosmos has been already in talks with NASA on this, the official said.
"The talks are underway and after the US gets its own manned spacecraft, we consider a possibility of cross flights of joint crews both on Russian and US spacecraft. This could be a good safety net for each other," he said.