MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. General Director of the Roscosmos space agency Dmitry Rogozin intends to request NASA’s position on the US refusal to issue an entry visa to Russian cosmonaut Nikolay Chub who was to undergo training at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
"The Americans did not issue a visa to Nikolay Chub (Oleg Kononenko’s crew) to go to a training session at Johnson [Space] Center. I am sending a query to NASA head on this incident. This is wrong," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Earlier, a source familiar with the situation told TASS that the US denied an entry visa without any explanation to Roscosmos cosmonaut Nikolay Chub who was supposed to undergo training in the US.
Training of foreign astronauts at Russia’s Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and of Russian cosmonauts at the Johnson Space Center is a routine practice, giving space crews knowledge of the US and Russian segments of the International Space Station. Such training sessions are held regardless of what kind of spacecraft will be used to deliver cosmonauts and astronauts to the orbit.
Nikolay Chub is a member of the backup crew of ISS Expedition 68, which is to fly to the orbital outpost aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft in September 2022. He is also a member of Expedition 69’s main crew, to be delivered to the ISS by a Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft next spring.