A meeting of the head of Federal Space Agency of Russian Federation, Vladimir Popovkin, and president of Italian Space Agency Enrico Saggese has taken place on September 12th. The parties have discussed the status and the prospects of bilateral cooperation, Roscosmos reports. AEX.ru

The special attention has been paid to the manned spacecraft and the future of International Space Station (ISS). The head of Roscosmos has confirmed the intention of using ISS until 2020 and has noted that “the station’s condition has been assessed by NASA, Roscosmos and ESA and the decision of operating it until 2020 has been taken. All the plans on maintaining the ISS are based on this decision. It is too early to discuss the further dates». Vladimir Popovkin has proposed creation of joint expert working group including representatives of all the space agencies for discussing the prospects of manned cosmonautics.

The problems of space exploration using the nuclear power plants and the cooperation within the framework of Millimetron project in the area of telecommunications have been discussed during the negotiations. The both parties have agreed on creation of the expert working group in October for solving the whole range of problems related to the bilateral cooperation, in particular, the exploration of North Pole, Earth remote probing and joint creation of telecommunications satellites. «We are ready for deep cooperation, – said Vladimir Popovkin, – and we are ready to consider the creation of joint satellites. Russia and Italy will have the rights of using them».

The working group will present its proposals on further cooperation between Russian and Italy in the area of space at the International Space Congress in Capetown (South Africa) in October. The meeting of Popovkin and Saggese will take place in the network of the Congress.