By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The interim head of NASA, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, said on Tuesday he is looking to find common ground with Russia on space issues when he meets with his Russian counterpart later this week.
Russian news agencies reported earlier this week that Duffy is set to hold talks with the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, for the first in-person meeting at the agencies’ heads’ level since 2018.
“We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine,” Duffy told reporters after an event on Capitol Hill, while noting that the United States has a partnership with Russia on the International Space Station. “We’re going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration.”
President Donald Trump named Duffy as NASA’s interim head earlier this month. Duffy has emphasized that this is a temporary assignment.
“We find points of agreement, points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and the Russians,” Duffy said. “Through hard times, we don’t throw those relationships away.”
Duffy is headed to Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday for meetings and to attend the scheduled launch of the SpaceX Crew-11 flight this week.
The space program is one of the few international projects on which the United States and Russia still cooperate closely. Relations in other areas between the two countries have broken down since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We plan to discuss the continuation of the cross-flight program, the extension of the International Space Station’s operational life, and the work of the Russia-U.S. joint task force on the future safe deorbiting and controlled ocean disposal of the ISS,” TASS cited Bakanov as saying in the Roscosmos statement.
The last meeting between the heads of Roscosmos and NASA took place in October 2018, when Dmitry Rogozin, then director general of Roscosmos, met NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in person also at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Bill Berkrot)
