Russia and China announced on Tuesday plans to develop a scientific research base on the moon.
The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding stating they would collaborate to build the International Scientific Lunar Station, Axios reported, citing an announcement from the Russian Federal Space Agency.
The agency described the planned moon base as “a complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon, designed to carry out multidisciplinary and multipurpose research work.”
The core focus of the station will be on the “potential use of the Moon,” along with standard research, technological developments, and exploring possibilities for a “human presence on the Moon,” the agency added.
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The memo signed between Russia and China signals the Kremlin’s distance from the Artemis Accords, which is led by the United States and focuses on governing international exploration of the moon.
The two countries have not detailed what their individual responsibilities would be when construction begins on the station. A date for construction also has not been scheduled.
Russia has been a major supporter of the International Space Station, which has been in orbit for over two decades, though discussions about whether the U.S. could end its support of the station in the next four to eight years has led the country to explore other avenues of future space research and exploration.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency, described NASA’s Artemis program to land astronauts back on the moon as too “U.S. centric.”
Since 2011, NASA has excluded the Chinese government and China-affiliated organizations from its activities, prompting China to seek space collaboration with other global superpowers.
NASA and other partners are still deliberating on whether its support of the ISS will extend up to 2028, while other countries that have supported the ISS, such as Japan and Canada, are signaling interest for supporting the European Space Agency’s planned Gateway station.
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International space exploration has skyrocketed in recent years, as the United Arab Emirates and China recently became the two countries besides the U.S. to send probes outside Mars’s orbit successfully last month.
The United States is the only nation to have successfully conducted crewed missions to the moon, with the last mission departing the lunar surface in 1972. In 1966, the USSR accomplished the first unmanned moon landing.
Japan, the European Space Agency, China, India, Luxembourg, and Israel have also sent unmanned spacecraft to the moon, though the multinational space race has inspired the U.S. to make a manned trip back to the lunar surface by 2024.
NASA is planning to construct a moon base called Artemis Base Camp, according to a 13-page readout released in April 2020. The plan, part of an effort endorsed by the Biden administration, outlined NASA’s long-term goal of using the lunar South Pole as a sort of training grounds for future manned missions to Mars, among other research and scientific purposes.
The space agency has said one goal of the lunar base would be to support trips by four astronauts to the surface for up to a week, though such an accomplishment at this point is speculative given the difficulty of transporting tons of building materials from Earth approximately 238,900 miles to the moon.
Matthias Sperl, a professor at the University of Cologne who works with the German Space Agency, said, “It will take months” to build one structure on the moon, adding that the only way to speed the process would be utilizing robotics for construction, according to a BBC report in 2019.
He also touted the use of regolith, a dusty sediment of rock and debris found on the lunar surface, as a potential material that could be melted using solar radiation and transformed into a 3D printable building material in order to supply materials for moon base structures.
“You need to bring a square metre or more big lens to capture the solar light to allow 3D sintering and printing of lunar dust,” Sperl said. “Then you need an astronaut or mostly likely a robot to bring those pieces together to bring together a settlement.”
NASA said in its April 2020 report that the agency will continue to explore the moon “indefinitely,” even after the first manned trip to Mars, which is scheduled for the 2030s.
