FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Roscosmos Outlines Russian Plans To Build Moon Base by 2030

Sept. 29, 2018 (EIRNS)—“I believe that Russia’s first inhabitable module on the surface of the Moon will emerge around 2030 or a little later,” said Igor Mitrofanov, the chief of the nuclear planetology department at the russian Academy of Sciences Space research Institute, speaking to TASS on Sept. 28. “Not a full-scale base yet, but a kind of guest house for visiting expeditions,” Mitrofanov said. He said he believes that Russia is capable of carrying out such a program on its own both technologically and financially.

On Sept. 24,Roscosmos said Russia had plans for building its own base for space crews on the surface of the Moon. The possibility of cooperation with NASA or other of the BrICS countries is being considered, the agency said. The first module of such a base will be equivalent in size to the module of the International Space Station, planted firmly on the Moon’s surface and covered with a one-meter thick layer of lunar soil, which would protect it even from the effects of strong solar flares, according to roscosmos.

Mitrofanov said Russian cosmonauts will arrive in landing capsules, which are relatively small in size. The life support system on the module would use lunar resources, “including water ice, which might be used to make fresh water and oxygen and, in the longer term, hydrogen that might serve as propellant in space rockets.”