Artist’s conception of SpaceX Dragon capsule berthing to the ISS (Credits: SpaceX).
According to Ria/Novosti, the Russian space agency Roscosmos denied SpaceX the permission to dock to the International Space Station in its next COTS demonstration mission, to be launched in November. The agency reported a statement of Alexei Krasov, head of the human spaceflight department of Roscosmos: “We will not issue docking permission unless the necessary level of reliability and safety is proven,” he said, “so far we have no proof that this spacecraft duly comply with the accepted norms of spaceflight safety.”
Shortly after the RIA/Novosti press release, NASA released a comment on twitter, reading: “Sorry, despite @ria_novosti reports, a decision has yet to be made regarding the upcoming @SpaceXer test flight to ISS. Incorrect story.”
Roscosmos officials have previously expressed their disagreement on allowing the Dragon to dock to the ISS in its November COTS demonstration mission on the ground of safety related concerns.
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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