China and Russia joined hands to build an international lunar space station, possibly on the moon’s surface, or in orbit or both, Rehnuma reports.
This agreement starts a new era in space cooperation between the two countries.
Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia’s Roscosmos and Zhang Kejian, administrator of China’s National Space Administration signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday regarding their collaboration in a ceremony conducted via teleconference.
According to a statement released by China’s space agency, the station which “is a comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation,” will be open to use by other countries.
The station will be a research facility and will carry out tasks such as “lunar exploration and utilization, lunar-based observation, basic scientific experiment and technical verification.”
China and Russia will use their expertise in space science, research, use of space equipment and technology to jointly develop a road map for the construction of the international lunar scientific research station.
Both the country will collaborate in the planning, design, development and execution of operation of the station.
The announcement came when NASA is trying to go back to the moon by 2024, decades after the last of the Apollo landings wrapped up in 1972. This announcement also marks Russia’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of its first-ever manned space flight.
The former Soviet Union was the pioneer in space technology and sent the first human in space in 1961. However, since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Russia has shown more willingness to engage in cooperative efforts in space.
China relied exponentially on Russia’s expertise in the early years of its space program but has paved its own path after launching their first crewed mission in 2003. Since then, China has launched its own space program – launching astronauts, constructing its own Earth-orbiting station, and launched a sample-return mission to the moon and a probe to Mars.
In recent years, China and the United States’ successes have eclipsed Russia in space exploration. Following SpaceX’s successful launch last year, Russia lost its monopoly on transporting astronauts to the International Space Station.
China has already sent a spacecraft, the Tianwen-1, in an orbit around Mars in anticipation of landing a rover on the surface in the coming months. If it succeeds to land on Mars, China would become the second country after the U.S. to put a spacecraft there.
