BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, June 3. /TASS/. A Russian manned spacecraft set to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) in the spring of next year may use an ultra-short one-orbit scheme of rendezvousing with the orbital outpost, Head of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.
The next launch of a Progress resupply ship scheduled for the autumn of this year will use a one-orbit rendezvous scheme, the Roscosmos chief said.
"This will involve not an hour and a half but two hours, considering all rendezvous operations. In actual fact, this will immediately pave the way for work with the crew under the same scheme. That is, the launch of a crewed spacecraft in the spring of 2023 will also proceed under the ultra-short scheme," Rogozin said.
Russia’s Energia Space Rocket Corporation announced in April 2019 that it had developed a one-orbit scheme for spacecraft to approach the international orbital outpost. The Energia press office said at the time that the scheme could be implemented in the next two or three years. Roscosmos tested elements of one-orbit rendezvousing with the ISS during a flight by the Progress MS-17 resupply ship to the orbital outpost in the summer of last year.
In December 2021, the Roscosmos chief said during a talk with cosmonauts that one-orbit flights by spacecraft to the ISS would begin soon.