The state Russian news agency TASS has reported that RSC Energia, the firm in charge of the building and operation of Soyuz spacecraft has declared that NASA has booked six more “seats” for its astronauts on Soyuz flights to the International Space Station in the 2018-2019 timeframe. The booking was apparently made on 27 January 2016 and the price set for each “seat” is Russia 5.7 billion rubles (US$88 million).
The news comes after it was revealed that Boeing commercial astronaut launch service is behind schedule as the maiden flight of its CST-100 Starliner is now delayed until 2017 with a crewed mission to take place in 2018 at the earliest.
The Russian Soyuz flights will use the new Soyuz-MS derivative of the current Soyuz TMA spacecraft.
