A team from the US space agency NASA will arrive in Moscow Thursday to check the progress of the project to launch the Zvezda module, part of the planned International Space Station (ISS), Interfax reported Monday.
A date for the launch of the module, from the Baikanour space centre in Kazakhstan, should be fixed during their visit, Interfax said.
The size of a bus, the Zvezda module, built by Russian firms but funded internationally, will become the living space of future astronauts aboard the ISS.
The launch has already been delayed for two years.
If Russia does not manage to launch the module by September, NASA will launch its own substitute module.
The ISS, a partnership of 16 countries, is being assembled from modules under a 40-flight schedule over the next five years.
Since November 1998, two modules have already been connected — the Russian-built Zarya and the US-built Unity — and a US shuttle mission in June last year supplied them with tools and cranes.
When completed, the ISS will have an internal volume roughly equivalent to that of the cabin of a 747 jumbo jet. It will be inhabited by an international crew of up to seven, living and working in space for between three and six months at a time.
