(Source: http://www.review.az/ru/view_news/121/Roskosmos_Aya_gedir)

Roscosmos considers the possibility of resumption of short-term ten-day flights to the ISS now when the new American spacecrafts have appeared. On the other hand, it is supposed to extend the term of long missions to the station up to nine months with the start of exploitation of the modernized “Soyuz” spacecrafts in 2015. This was reported by the Head of Roscosmos Manned Programmes Aleksei Krasnov. “In the future, when the American manned spacecraft will start operating – in all appearance it will happen not earlier than in the years 2017-2018 - we will integrate not only long flights, but also visit flights into the programme of flights to the station – such visit flights were usual during the operation of “Mir” spacecraft and the first stage of the ISS construction” - he said.

“There is a need for target flights, when a trained person, a scientist, arrives, implements his or her programme during ten days or a month and returns to the Earth with the acquired results” - Krasnov explained. According to him, in this case the partners of the ISS will have more opportunities for their work which are currently limited by the number of long flights. In addition, the option of increasing the term of orbital missions is also considered which will bring the best calculation of the resources available.

“May be we will pass on to the term of nine months per flight, because we hope that the new ship under modification will be able to remain on orbit longer than today's ship” - the Head of Roscosmos Manned Programmes ascertained. “We will be able to make not four, but three long flights a year. Then the inclusion of short flights into the programme will be quite possible with the use of new spacecrafts which will be made by our colleagues, we can even talk about the missions one month long” - Krasnov noted.

The first flight of the Russian “Soyuz TMA-MS” spaceship is scheduled for 2015. This version of the “Soyuz” spaceship will have the increased energy conversion of solar cells, the docking and orientation engines will be changed which will make it possible to perform the approach and the docking to the ISS even in case of failure of one of the engines and to ensure the lowering of the spaceship even in case of failure of two engines.

The modern systems of communication and direction finding, as well as radio command system will be installed on the spaceship; these systems will use satellite data links. The systems of motor control and navigation of the spacecraft will undergo the biggest changes.