Russia is planning to work with China on building a nuclear power plant on the Moon in the next decade, the chief of the country’s space programme said on Tuesday.
“Today we are seriously considering a project – somewhere at the turn of 2033-2035 – to deliver and install a power unit on the lunar surface together with our Chinese colleagues,” Yuri Borisov, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said.
The project aims to provide electricity for future lunar settlements as solar panels will not be enough to power them, Borisov said. The former Russian deputy defence minister said Moscow was able to contribute to the plan with China with its expertise on “nuclear space energy”.
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“This is a very serious challenge… it should be done in automatic mode, without the presence of humans,” he added.
China already has ambitious plans for long-term lunar habitation, starting with plans to land its first taikonauts on the Moon by 2030 to using 3D printing technology to construct buildings on its surface.
Last year, Chinese state media said the country had a five-year-plan to begin building a lunar base using soil from the Moon.
Nuclear cargo spaceship
Russia’s Borisov also spoke also of plans to build a nuclear-powered cargo spaceship. He said all the technical questions concerning the project had been solved apart from finding a solution on how to cool the nuclear reactor.
“We are indeed working on a space tugboat. This huge, cyclopean structure that would be able, thanks to a nuclear reactor and a high-power turbines… to transport large cargoes from one orbit to another, collect space debris and engage in many other applications,” Borisov said.
Russian officials have spoken before of ambitious plans to one day mine on the Moon, but the Russian space programme has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years.
Its first Moon mission in 47 years failed last year after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed.
Moscow has said it will launch further lunar missions and then explore the possibility of a joint Russian-China crewed mission and even a lunar base.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month dismissed a warning by the United States that Moscow planned to put nuclear weapons in space as false, saying it was a ploy to draw Russia into arms negotiations on the West’s terms.
- Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena
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