Roscosmos wants to build national orbital station, says CEO

Moscow, March 17 Russia's space agency Roscosmos is more interested in building a new Russian orbital station than an international one, the agency's CEO Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday.

His comments came barely a week after Russia announced an agreement with China on the creation of a lunar space station, the "International Scientific Lunar Station."

"We are rather oriented towards a national station," Rogozin said, adding that Russian cosmonauts would then be able to feel they are totally in command on board the Earth's orbiter, TASS news agency reported.

A decision on a new station would be made by the end of this year, he said.

Rogozin said that current negotiations with NASA on the future of the International Space Station (ISS) were "shallow".

He speculated that ISS's life cycle would be repeatedly prolonged not by several years, but by one year.

Also, he said it might be possible to extend the service life not of the whole station, but of its individual modules.

"On the whole, I am looking forward to full-scale talks when NASA's new chief takes over. Possibly in May. We may have a meeting for a serious discussion then. So far we have been holding talks with acting officials," Rogozin said.

( With inputs from IANS )