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Despite Lean Space Budgets Russia Is Headed For the Moon (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Thanks to the collapse of oil prices that has ravaged the Russian economy, dependent as it is on fossil fuel exports, Russia's space program is facing draconian budget cuts... Still, the country that lost the race to the moon still has ambitious plans for Earth's closest neighbor... The Russians even have hopes of landing cosmonauts on the lunar surface by the end of the 2020s.
New evidence of subsurface ice helped fuel their interest in human moon landings, according to Science magazine, which reports that Russia is first planning five robotic missions to the moon over the next nine years. Three of these will be conducted with the European Space Agency, including one which will drill for underground samples in the new areas of the lunar surface, and the director of Russia's space agency says "the next decade will be quite busy for us."
New evidence of subsurface ice helped fuel their interest in human moon landings, according to Science magazine, which reports that Russia is first planning five robotic missions to the moon over the next nine years. Three of these will be conducted with the European Space Agency, including one which will drill for underground samples in the new areas of the lunar surface, and the director of Russia's space agency says "the next decade will be quite busy for us."
where they have yet to confirm whether they will conform to the "Minsk" peace agreement protocols that their president already signed.
You mean the same protocols which explicitly state Russia is to remove all its troops from Ukrainian soil, allow Ukraine to take full and absolute control over its internationally recognized borders and stop supplying arms, ammunition and all other support to the terrorists in East Ukraine? You mean like all those items which Russia signed and agreed to conform to?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower