Putin ratifies plan to jointly build lunar base with China
Putin has approved a plan to jointly build the International Lunar Research Station with China, an ambitious space project which was announced previously by the two close neighbours. The document connected with the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) was published on a Russian official legal information portal on Wednesday, Russia's state-run Sputnik news agency reported.
The ILRS will consist of sections on the lunar surface, sections in lunar orbit and sections on Earth, and it will be built in two phases, Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration programme said in April this year.
According to Wu, the first phase of the ILRS construction project will see a basic station built by 2035 in the lunar south pole region. The second phase will see the expansion of the station, set for completion by 2045, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Wu as saying.
Some 12 more countries and international organisations have signed on to the ambitious initiative, Sergey Savelyev, deputy general director for International Cooperation at the Russian state space agency Roscosmos said, according to a report in China's state-run Global Times.
Earlier in March, the Russian government submitted to parliament's lower house a bill to ratify the agreement with China. The ratification comes days after the ascender of China's Chang'e-6 probe took off from the lunar surface carrying samples collected from the moon's far side earlier this month.
This was the first endeavour of its kind to collect the soil from this
