OREANDA-NEWS. April 05, 2010. Russia proposes ISS partners to develop a spaceship for deep space missions on the basis of the International Space Station, Alexey Krasnov, Head of Roscosmos Human Space Flight Directorate, told news media on Sunday, during the traditional Soyuz/ISS post-docking press conference in the Mission Control Center, Korolev.

Russia revealed the idea about “development of a small spaceship to fly beyond LEO and to return back on the basis of the ISS” during the meeting of the Heads of the space agencies in Tokyo.

According to Krasnov, the target has not been defined yet. “This might be lunar orbit, or an asteroid. The partners expressed their interest to this cooperative initiative”, he said.
Krasnov also mentioned that Russia would prefer having the spaceship available by 2020. "Technical objective of the project is still to be defined by Russian engineers, together with their foreign colleagues, probably… Russian space program implies development of an orbital integration and experimental facility in 2020-2030. Why don’t we try to accomplish it earlier?”, Krasnov said.
ISS partners discussed extension of the station’s orbital life till 2028. Technical feasibility of this intention is still to be studied.  "RSC-Energia is not studying the feasibility to prolong operations of the Zvezda module, the first module of the station, launched in 1998 from Baikonur… Moreover, some functions of the RS habitation module, Zvezda, will have duplicated in the Multifunctional Laboratory module to be launched by Russia in the second quarter of 2012. This will help extending station life till 2028", - Krasnov stated.