NEW YORK, November 7. /TASS/. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirms the possibility of organizing flights by Russian cosmonauts aboard US spaceships and NASA astronauts on board Soyuz spacecraft, International Space Station (ISS) Program Manager Joel Montalbano said during an online conference.

"We are trying to <…> have the backups: on <…> Soyuz vehicle we will have an astronaut, and a cosmonaut on our vehicles," he said.

Roscomsos Chief Dmitry Rogozin told a briefing in late October that the Russian and US space agencies had begun to discuss substantively flights by Russian cosmonauts aboard US space vehicles and vice versa. Rogozin said he saw no need to use those flight schemes at the moment, but did not rule out discussions on the issue with US partners.

The launch of the third crew aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) has been scheduled for November 10, with docking due at 3:10 Moscow time on November 12. Assigned to the mission are NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer.