MOSCOW, January 12. /TASS/. Russia does not plan to build a new space station of its own till 2025, Sergey Savelyev, chief of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily that will be published on Tuesday.

“A possibility of creating a new Russian space station does exist in principle. Such project may be implemented in international cooperation, with China for example. But neither the current, nor the draft of a future federal space program have such provisions. Such project can be linked with the lifecycle of the International Space Station,” he said.

As for cooperation with China, the most probable projects in the immediate future, in his words, are joint experiments onboard the Russian segment of the International Space Station.

“Further plans might include experiments onboard OKA-T orbiting unmanned modules that might be fitted for various inclinations, and equipping our countries’ automated interplanetary stations with research tools of the partner country,” Savelyev noted.

He explained that an OKA-T module was a multipurpose orbiting laboratory to conduct microgravitation and applied technological and biotechnological research. “The lab is to work independently in the orbit occasionally docking to the International Space Station or any other low-orbit station. Servicing research equipment, refueling the lab and other operations will be the competence of cosmonauts,” he noted.