The 13th International Space Station (ISS) crew will leave for the station on March 30 from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, Vyacheslav Davidenko said. Preparations for the launch are to begin in the middle of this month, he said, following delivery to Kazakhstan of a Soyuz-TMA-8 spacecraft from the Moscow Region.
The crew includes Russian astronaut Pavel Vinogradov, American astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes, who will return after his short program with the 12th ISS expedition.
NASA has agreed to pay the Russian agency $21 million for taxiing the American astronaut to and from the station. It will be the first time that NASA will pay money to the Russian agency after it suspended Shuttle spacecraft flights.
Davidenko said the agency also plans to launch a Soyuz carrier rocket with the second European Galileo global positioning and communications system satellite GIOVE B in 2006.
The first GIOVE A satellite of the Galileo project, which envisions the creation of a satellite group consisting of 30 spacecraft, was launched by a Russian space carrier from Baikonur on December 28, 2005.
The Galileo will be Europe's own global navigation satellite system, providing a highly accurate global positioning service under civilian control. It will operate in conjunction with GPS and GLONASS, the two other global satellite navigation systems.
Russian Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov said earlier that the agency was planning to reach an agreement with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) in order to combine GPS, GLONASS and Galileo into a unified global positioning system.
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