Russia will build bases on the moon?

Russia is discussing with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) about building research bases on the moon.

Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos is also consulting NASA and ESA about the possibility of arranging manned space stations on the moon orbit, Russian newspaper Ria Novosti reported.

The science fiction sketch of a research base inhabited the Moon.

'More and more research supports the hypothesis that humans can live for a long time on or around the moon' , Director Roscosmos - Vladimir Popovkin shared on Ria Novosti. 'Today, we know that at the poles of the water moon' , the parties are 'starting to discuss how to explore the moon together'.

During the momentum phase, Russia tried to investigate a "manned transport" system on the moon, Popovskin revealed. The construction of the moon base will complement the country's existing plans for lunar exploration. Russia hopes to be able to launch two unmanned ships, Luna Glob and Luna Resource, on the moon by 2020.

According to LiveScience , the tripartite cooperation between Russia, NASA and ESA in an important space project is not unprecedented. They used to stay together for more than a decade to build and operate the ISS station.

It can be said that 2011 is a difficult year for Russia's space industry. The $ 165 million ship Phobos-Grunt, which the country designed to explore Mars's moon Phobos, was trapped in Earth orbit shortly after the launch and fell back to Earth on January 16. Roscosmos officials are not yet sure what the cause of the incident is, despite some speculation about the destruction from the outside.

However, Phobos-Grunt was just one of five major failures of the Russian space program in 2011. Russia has three other failed satellite launches and the Progress 44 freighter was crashed to the ground right after. when launching.