OREANDA-NEWS. The United States of America spent almost 4 billion dollars on the delivery of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Russian Soyuz spacecrafts. This is stated in the report of the Inspector General of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Paul Martin, published on the official website of the agency on November 14.

“As of July 2019, NASA had purchased 70 Soyuz seats worth $ 3.9 billion to ferry 70 U.S. and partner astronauts to and from the Station,” the document states.

The report also says that the United States, most likely, starting in the spring of 2020, will reduce the number of astronauts on the ISS from three to one. This was explained by “schedule delays in the development of Boeing and SpaceX space flight systems coupled with a reduction in the frequency of Soyuz flights”.

According to the NASA, over the 20 years of the ISS’s exploitation, 85 manned flights of the Russian Soyuz spacecrafts and American Space Shuttles were carried out, and 239 astronauts and cosmonauts visited the station.

On November 6, it was reported that Boeing Corporation submitted to the NASA a project of an apparatus for landing astronauts on the lunar surface. The device is called Human Lander System and consists of two parts. One of them is responsible for the landing on the surface of the Earth’s satellite, the other for flying into orbit. It is supposed that this craft can be docked with developed by the NASA near-Moon station Gateway and Orion spacecraft.