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First expeditions with cosmonauts’ landing to create a permanent lunar base are planned in 2030
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Russia will start colonizing the Moon in 2030, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday. The daily has received a draft concept of Russian lunar program developed by enterprises of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), a Russian Academy of Sciences institute and Moscow State University.
Notably, the draft concept envisages “creation of a lunar testing ground and a base for extraction of natural resources,” the daily reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in an article published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily on April 11 that Russia’s strategic goals in space exploration were linked to a broader presence on low Earth orbits, colonization of the Moon and launching exploration of Mars and other objects of the Solar System.
“Authors of the project do not rule out attracting private investors to lunar projects", and “first expeditions with cosmonauts’ landing to create a permanent lunar base are planned in 2030,” the daily reported.
It is needed to explore the Moon dynamically, the project authors recommended, because “leading space powers will explore and assign for themselves lunar territories suitable to provide future opportunities of practical use in the next 20-30 years.”
“The Moon is a first step on the way to the deep space,” chief scientific fellow of the Institute of Space Policy Ivan Moiseyev said. “Therefore, it is reasonable to use the Moon as a promising spaceport,” he added. “As for extraction of mineral resources on the Moon, it is senseless to deliver them to the Earth, because even if diamonds are found there, it will be unprofitable to bring them here all the same,” Moiseyev believes. “But in any case it is possible to start with oxygen generation, as it exists on the Moon in many chemical compounds,” the scientist noted.
Such large-scale projects as colonization of the Moon or Mars would hardly be funded from the state budget, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics Andrei Ionin said.
“Planet exploration by people will be a prerogative of private companies,” Ionin said. “There are already many such projects now that envisage Mars colonization, production of mineral resources on asteroids and similar initiatives. It is difficult to imagine that some government will be prepared to spend trillions for creation of lunar bases, because they have a good deal of other, more vital tasks, including medicine, education, army,” he added.
Roscosmos explained that initiatives in the federal space program would pass a comprehensive expertise at the level of experts and scientists of several industries, and after that the program would be submitted to the government, the daily reported.
Quelle: ITARTASS
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Russia is planning to start exploring the Moon by 2016, Izvestia reported Thursday.
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Russia is planning to put a manned colony on the Moon as soon as in 2030, and is racing to dispatch the first robotic rovers to explore the lunar surface two years from now, a media report says.
Newspaper Izvestia said Thursday it had gained access to a draft government program, prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Roscosmos federal space agency, Moscow State University and several space research institutes, outlining a three-step plan toward manning the moon.
A robotic craft would be sent to the Moon as early as in 2016 and through the following decade, and by 2028, Russia would be ready to send manned missions to orbit the Earth's satellite, Izvestia said, citing the report.
In the final stage, planned for 2030, humans would be sent to the lunar surface to set up the infrastructure for an initial colony using local resources, the report said. The program also envisages building a space- and Earth-monitoring observatory on the Moon.
The Russian document underlined the need for speedy lunar exploration, saying "leading space powers will expand and establish their rights to convenient lunar footholds to ensure future opportunities for practical use," in the next 20 to 30 years, Izvestia cited the document as saying.
The price tag of the mission is uncertain, but the first stage of the program is expected to cost around 28.5 billion rubles ($815.8 million), while earlier estimates indicated that developing and building a piloted spaceship would add 160 billion rubles or so, though Russia hopes to attract private investors to help bankroll the project, the report said.
But while the program envisages international cooperation on the project, it stresses that the "independence of the national lunar program must be ensured regardless of the conditions and the extent of the participation in it by foreign partners."
Lunar resources may present a "treasure-trove" of rare and valuable minerals of substantial strategic importance, according to NASA, but the concentration and the distribution of those elements remain uncertain.
The Moon can also be used as a launchpad for future missions into deep space, said the research chief of the Institute of Space Policy, Ivan Moiseyev, Izvestia reported.
China, India and Japan are also developing lunar exploration projects, and a California-based company Moon Express is planning to send its first robotic spacecraft to the satellite next year, according to the company's website.
Quelle: The Moscow Times
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