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Agence France-Presse

Russia and the United States agreed on Wednesday to cooperate on a Nasa-led project to build the first lunar space station, part of a long-term project to send humans to Mars.
The US space agency said earlier this year that it was exploring a programme called the Deep Space Gateway, a multi-stage project to push further into the solar system.
The project envisages building a crew-tended spaceport in lunar orbit that would serve as a “gateway to deep space and the lunar surface,” Nasa has said.
And on Wednesday the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that a cooperation agreement had been signed at an astronautical congress in Adelaide.
“The partners intend to develop international technical standards which will be used later, in particular to create a space station in lunar orbit,” the Russian agency said in a statement.

The Russians and Americans would cooperate to build the systems needed to organise scientific missions in lunar orbit and to the surface of the moon, the agency added.
“Roscosmos and Nasa have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station. Taking into account the country’s extensive experience in developing docking units, the station’s future elements will be created using Russian designs.”
Record-breaking Nasa astronaut Peggy Whitson returns to Earth after 288 days on space station
Igor Komarov, Roscosmos’s general director, said no fewer than five countries were building their own rockets and systems.
“To avoid future problems over technical cooperation, part of the standards should be unified – for a possibility for various countries to work on their craft and dock to the international lunar station,” Komarov was quoted as saying in the statement.

Russia and the US also discussed using Moscow’s Proton-M and Angara rockets to help create the infrastructure of the lunar spaceport, the statement said, adding that the main works were slated to begin in the mid-2020s.
Aspiring astronauts start 200-day test in China’s self-sustaining ‘space station’
Space exploration – including joint work on the International Space Station (ISS) – is one of the few areas where international cooperation between Russia and the US has not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and Syria.
The US$100 billion ISS, which has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000km/h since 1998, is the world’s largest space project.


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Space

Russia and US agree to build first lunar orbit space station

The International Space Station. Photo: Nasa

epa05501544 A handout picture made available by NASA on 20 August 2016 shows International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 48 crew members Kate Rubins (L) and Jeff Williams (R) preparing to grapple the SpaceX Dragon supply spacecraft from aboard the ISS, in space, 20 July 2016. Rubins and Williams successfully conducted a spacewalk on 19 August 2016 to install the first of two international docking adapters (IDAs). The new docking port will enable the future arrival of US commercial crew spacecraft. EPA/NASA HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY

A view of the "super Moon" is seen from Veracruz May 5, 2012. A "super Moon" will light up Saturday's night sky in a once-a-year cosmic show, overshadowing a meteor shower from remnants of Halley's Comet, the U.S. space agency NASA said. The Moon will seem especially big and bright since it will reach its closest spot to Earth at the same time it is in its full phase, NASA said. REUTERS/Martin Lara Reyna (MEXICO - Tags: ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY)