In a bold move, the Russian Federal Space Agency, Rocosmos, has announced that it has big plans for the Moon. Speaking to Russian media, Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Rocosmos, said that cosmonaut selection is underway and that “the group will most likely be trained to fly to the Moon.” The time frame: 2020.
For Russia, that's a bold undertaking not only for the time frame, but for the fact that Russia has experienced a string of major space failures in the past year.
First, the good. Unlike America, which had yet to put a human into orbit when President Kennedy announced his intention of going to the Moon in 1961, the Russians have over 50 years of spaceflight experience under their belts. While it s not widely known among the Western public, Russia launched a series of unmanned Moon missions in the 60s and 70s in its Luna probes. Russia even landed rovers on the Moon, too. Basically, the Russians know how to get to the Moon, just not with people.
As everyone knows, Russia never landed cosmonauts on the Moon. As for Russia's manned Moon program, it was dealt a devastating blow in 1966 with the sudden death of Sergei Korolev, the father of Russian rocketry. With the bad timing, Russia's space program was virtually leaderless at a time when NASA was making its final push to the Moon. End result: NASA gets to the Moon in July, 1969, while the Russians are still floundering. Space race won by the Americans, the drive in Russia to reach the Moon diminished.
Now, come 40 years after the Space Race was won, partnership is the name of the game and, even as American-Russian national relationships are rather cold on Earth, just last month, Popovkin proposed building a Moon base with other space-faring nations, even extending a hand for NASA to join in the project.
As for the bad, Russia has had a hard past 12 months in space with several highly-publicized failures, most notably the Phobos-Grunt Mars probe, which fell from orbit after failing to escape Earth's gravity after a faulty rocket booster failed to fire shortly after its November launch. In addition, Russia has been experiencing catastrophic failures with its famously reliable Soyuz rockets. The crisis was so severe that there was even consideration of abandoning the International Space Station should it become impossible to launch supplies.
So, what does this mean? Right now, not much. Russia has yet to even begin the selection of cosmonauts for the proposed Moon missions and the plan of exactly what to do on the Moon itself is anything but clear at this point. Still, it will be interesting to see what the coming months bring in regards to Russian plans for lunar exploration.
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