The Russian space agency, Roskosmos has stated that US has rejected their proposal to help NASA in building the proposed lunar base.
They also stated that they are ready to co-operate with US and NASA for this extremely difficult mission, but for unknown reasons, the United States have said that they will undertake the program themselves.
NASA has plans to start work on the base as they hope to get back to the Moon by 2020. They still not have commented on this statement that is reported by Interfax news.
NASA has previous experience of working with Roskosmos for the development of the ISS. The construction of the International Space Station has relied heavily on Russian Soyuz spacecraft as it was used to ferry astronauts and supplies after all shuttles were grounded following the Columbia disaster in 2003.
Roskosmos has signed a contract for nearly $1 billion with NASA to supply cargo shuttles between now and 2011 for the ISS as NASA is grounding Shuttles in 2010. By grounding Shuttles the space agency will get the funds they need to develop the next-generation space craft which will be used to ferry astronauts to Moon and even Mars.
On the other hand Roskosmos believes that Russian and US expertise should be pooled in for the critical mission to build a permanently-occupied Moon base.
The base will be built on one of the poles of the Moon and will be used as a stepping stone for future space explorations which might include a manned mission to the red planet.
Update:
Despite media reports, NASA has stated that it has not received any proposals from Russia to conduct joint Moon activities. They have stated that nothing was offered and nothing was refused. NASA may not be too keen in utilizing Russian expertise in building the lunar base as they might want to keep the mission simple.
Moreover there has been a controversy about competing technologies for space exploration between Russia and US. Roskosmos was also worried that over utilization on Soyuz will make the spacecraft a space cabbie and they will not be able to develop a next generation spacecraft as NASA.
Image Credit: BBC
Via: BBC
