WASHINGTON, July 30. /TASS/. The United States even in difficult times, despite disagreements does not sever partnership relations with Russia in space, US Secretary of Transportation, Acting Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Sean Duffy told TASS.

Asked about the upcoming meeting with Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, Duffy said that the United States sees space an area of "international partnership."

"What's unique is we might find disagreement with conflict here, which we have. We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine, but what you see is we find points of agreement and points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and Russians and so through hard times, we don't throw those relationships away," he said.

"We're going to continue to work on the problems that we have here, but we're going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration."

Bakanov, who heads the state corporation's delegation, arrived in the United States to meet with the acting NASA head on July 31 — the first such encounter in eight years.

Bakanov will visit the Lyndon Johnson Space Center, the Boeing production division, the SpaceX spacecraft and spacecraft assembly buildings, and will also meet with the crew of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which includes Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov under the cross-flight program. As Bakanov noted in an interview with RBC TV, the Russian delegation has been invited to the upcoming launch of the Crew-11 mission, which is expected to take place on July 31 from the Cape Canaveral Space Center (Florida). Besides Platonov, the mission includes American astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, as well as Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.