Russia's space agency is prepared to fly a Brazilian astronaut to the International Space Station on board a Russian Soyuz craft next year, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an official as saying Saturday. Space agency chief Anatoly Perminov and the head of the Brazilian Defense Ministry's external relations department, Carlos Augusto Leal Velloso, discussed the "possible flight of the first Brazilian cosmonaut to the ISS next year," Russian agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davydenko was quoted as saying. During a visit to Brazil in November, President Vladimir Putin agreed that Russia would help Brazil resume its space program and restore its rocket-launching base, destroyed by an explosion in 2003 that killed 21 people. Russia also promised to take a Brazilian astronaut on a flight to the orbiting station. Velloso told Perminov that a Brazilian air force officer had been training under the U.S. space agency, NASA, ITAR-Tass quoted Davydenko as saying. U.S. space shuttle flights have been grounded since the February 2003 Columbia disaster, leaving Russian space craft as the only means of transport to the station.
