Russia and China have signed an agreement to build and work on an “International Scientific Lunar Station” orbiting the Moon, the countries’ space agencies announced Tuesday. The space powers had been in talks for months as Russia mulled over whether it would participate in NASA’s Gateway program, a rival lunar space station to be built by a coalition of other countries in the next decade.
The International Scientific Lunar Station that Russia and China will work on is “a complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon,” Roscosmos said in a statement. It will be designed to support a variety of research experiments “with the possibility of long-term unmanned operation with the prospect of a human presence on the moon,” the statement said.
Like NASA, China has been courting international support for its own plans to put infrastructure on the Moon. It’s also sent several robotic Chang’e missions to the Moon, including the
first landing on the Moon’s far side and a
swift sample retrieval mission in December.
The lunar space station agreement, signed virtually between China’s space chief Zhang Kejian and Russia’s space chief Dmitry Rogozin, marks the latest development in Beijing’s efforts to explore the Moon alongside rivals like NASA, which is barred from working with China under a law passed by Congress in 2011.
Russia, which has maintained a decades-long
partnership with NASA on the International Space Station, has been reluctant to extend its space alliance with the US to the Moon.
