MOSCOW: Russia and China agreed Tuesday to build a lunar space station, asMoscow seeks to modernise its extraterrestrial might and catch up with theUnited States in the space race.
Russia, which sent the first man into space during the Soviet Union, hasbeen lagging behind Washington and Beijing in the exploration of the Moonand Mars.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said in a statement that a memorandum wassigned by its head Dmitry Rogozin and Zhang Kejian of China’s NationalSpace Administration (CNSA).
It said the lunar station will be designed as a “complex of experimentalresearch facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon”.
It would be available for use by other interested countries andinternational partners, the statement said, without details about thecompletion date.
Despite its former Soviet glory, Russia’s space sector has suffered greatlyin recent years from a lack of financing and corruption.
Moscow and Washington are collaborating in the space sector — one of thefew areas of cooperation left between the Cold War rivals.
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Russia last year lost its monopoly for manned flights to the InternationalSpace Station (ISS) after the first succesful mission of the US companySpace X.
Elon Musks’s Space X is planning a trip to the Moon that will be open toseveral members of the public.
China has expressed its space ambitions, launching last year its Tianwen-1probe that is currently orbiting Mars.
China in December successfully brought samples of the Moon back to Earth,in a first mission of this type in over 40 years.
