In what seems like an alternate universe in hindsight, Russia and the European Space Agency began discussing collaboration on next-generation crewed spacecraft two decades ago. Under the agreement, Europe would have provided a service module to power a crew capsule carrying up to six passengers. Europe ultimately decided not to pursue a crewed spacecraft project at the time, and Russia’s state-backed space corporation, Roscosmos, chose to move ahead with a crewed spacecraft on its own.
This project—always seemingly more of a Potemkin village than an effort encompassing real hardware—has gone under various guises over the years: Beyond the name changes and a flood of renderings, after nearly 20 years of work, then, is anything actually happening with the Eagle spacecraft? For starters, the relatively new chief executive of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, appears to have jettisoned the “Eagle” name of the spacecraft favored by Rogozin. In a recently published Interfax story, the spacecraft is referred to as PTK NP.
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