Posted: Sun, Mar 4, 2001, 12:21 PM ET (1721 GMT)
American and Russian space agency officials have yet to reach an agreement that would allow California millionaire Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station later this year. The Orlando Sentinel reported Saturday that several days of meetings last week in Houston between NASA and Rosaviakosmos officials concluded without reaching an accord on training and safety guidelines for visitors to ISS. Whether such guidelines are necessary to permit Tito to fly to the station in late April as part of a three-man crew that will swap out Soyuz modules docked to the station is unknown. Tito and his crewmates, cosmonauts Talgat Musabayev and Yuri Baturin, are scheduled to visit the Johnson Space Center later this month for training in an ISS mockup. NASA officials earlier last week denied reports in a British newspaper that such a deal had already been struck.

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