MOSCOW, August 31 (RIA Novosti) - A leading...

Deputy head of the Russian Space Agency Vitaly Davydov said earlier this week that a major new large-scale space station would be built to replace the world's sole civilian space station in 2015.

But Nikolai Sevastyanov, the president of the Energia Russian Rocket and Space Corporation, said the ISS should be spared the same fate of Russia's Mir orbital station, which was crashed into the Pacific Ocean in March 2001.

"We propose using the ISS as a permanent artificial satellite for the Earth instead of sinking it [in the Ocean]," Sevastyanov told the fifth international aerospace congress in Moscow.

Sevastyanov said this option would allow the international space community to continue pursuing the tasks that the ISS is currently performing.

"Today the ISS performs the following functions: it is an international space port, it carries out fundamental research and experiments, tests new space technologies in the interests of industry on Earth, researches

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