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NASA official sees possibility of expanding integrated flight deal with Russia

Long-term goal is to have integrated crews on all the missions, Joel Montalbano, the manager of NASA's International Space Station program said

NEW YORK, August 4. /TASS/. The Russian-US agreement on integrated space missions can be extended and expanded, Joel Montalbano, the manager of NASA's International Space Station (ISS) program, told reporters on Thursday.

"So, our plan is after we get past the CFT mission [Boeing Crew Flight Test, Starliner’s first crewed mission due in December], we’ll do an update to the agreement and work with our Russian colleagues such that our long-term goal is to have integrated crews on all the missions. But we wanted to have a couple of Boeing missions moving forward, and right after CFT we will be putting that in work, but everybody understands it’s a long-term goal and we just have to do this in steps," he said.