"And this type of exchange will increase the robustness of our program, and we will continue this practice to make our program more reliable."
Industry sources said that Roscosmos officials have privately advised NASA that Russia is unlikely to withdraw from the ISS before it starts launching modules for the Russian Orbital Service Station, a new national space station. That is expected no earlier than 2028.
QUOTE FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:
"This Cygnus mission will also debut a new capability to reboost the altitude of the space station, a service that has been exclusively provided by Russia since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. "This Cygnus vehicle has been modified to provide a capability to reboot ISS, so to use some of its propellants in the vehicle itself," Contella said. "We’ve done a test prior to this with Cygnus, but this will be our first real use of this capability to actually reboost the station. And it gives us another way to do so, in addition to the Russian thrusters or the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft capabilities." The Northrop Grumman cargo ship has a gimbaled delta velocity engine to make the reboost maneuver possible, officials said."
acknowledged the present impossibility of carrying out the ongoing cooperation with Roscosmos on the ExoMars rover mission with a launch in 2022, and mandated the ESA Director General to take appropriate steps to suspend the cooperation activities accordingly;
authorised the ESA Director General to carry out a fast-track industrial study to better define the available options for a way forward to implement the ExoMars rover mission."
The inclination of the ISS orbit is 51.4 °.
Baikonur is located at 45.96 ° north latitude, the Vostochny spaceport is 51.88 ° north latitude, and the Plesetsk military spaceport is almost 63 ° north latitude.
That is, none of them get to the Chinese space station."
[NOTE: Russia no longer launches from the ESA French Guiana site, located at 5.22 ° north latitude, but WOULD have been able to reach the Chinese space station Tiangong from there.]
It is accessible from Vostochny Cosmodrome and also accessible from [the European] Kourou launching site [in French Guiana]," Rogozin said.
"We have explored the feasibility of upgrading the Soyuz launch pad at Kourou Cosmodrome to enable it to launch manned missions to the Chinese orbital station."
[NOTE: Russia no longer uses the ESA Korou Cosmodrome in French Guiana.]