 It was a project initiated under the government-to-government offset agreement through the purchase of Su-30MKM fighter jets for the Royal Malaysian Air Force.Under this agreement the Russian Federation bore the cost of training two Malaysians for space travel and for sending one to the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2007 under the Angkasawan program.The first two aircraft were handed over to the RMAF on May 2007 at Irkut's aircraft manufacturing facility at Irkutsk, Russia.