U.S. NASA does not have capacities to build an asteroid mission spacecraft by 2015, the head of Roscosmos' manned flights department, Alexei Krasnov, said in the wake of Senate committee's approval of the bill that would allow NASA to create the spacecraft for deep space missions.
On July 15, NASA unveiled its plans to send astronauts to an asteroid and to Mars no later than 2015.
Earlier in April, U.S. President Barack Obama said in his speech on U.S space industry development that the astronauts would likely to fly to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the mid-2030s, but NASA was ready to boost the process saying the development of the spacecraft for manned deep space missions should be started as early as 2015.
"It is unreal by 2015," Krasnov said. "[They] probably won't be able to any sooner than by 2023-2025. They do not have the necessary spacecraft, and we will be ready with the project by 2018-2020".
MOSCOW, July 19 (RIA Novosti)
