MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. Russia is ready to propose to the BRICS group member states (comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) the creation of a joint orbital station, head of the Scientific-Technical Council of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Yuri Koptev told journalists on Wednesday.

The joint orbital station development may be started if the International Space Station (ISS) operation is stopped due to political disagreements between the current ISS partners, Koptev said.

"If we have a force majeure situation due to some political demarche, we have a possibility after 2019 to preserve the backbone of the station which we’ll be able to develop jointly with BRICS states or with some other countries," he said.

Roscosmos head Igor Komarov said that Russia’s new orbital station will be based on three units - a multifunctional laboratory module, a universal docking module and a scientific-power module that are planned to be launched respectively in 2017, 2018 and 2019.