RUSSIA -- According to the head of the Russian Space Agency, the country has recently entered a space competition. The goal of the race is to send out a manned space flight that will conduct deep space exploration.
"We are now part of a competition led by the leading space powers in the world," said Dmitry Rogozin, Roscosmos Chief.
He also revealed that he recently met with Alexander Sergeev, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They discussed the details of the program concerning the exploration of the Moon and the other specifications of that project.
The complexity of the planned space exploration involved in the so-called "space race" is rather cooperative in nature. According to Nathan Eysmont, Chief Fellow from the Russian Institute of Space Studies believes that "This space exploration is competitive in nature, but it is cooperative in some way."
"It doesn't mean that everyone is racing to be the first to win. It may come as a surprise, but without the cooperation of all the participants, there would be nothing about this competition that will come out good," said Eysmont
The team of Russian astronauts is expected to make their first spacewalk by 2030. The program would be called the Moon. It will include the development of both a super heavy lifter module and a take-off module too.
Before the actual spacewalk to set out for the Moon mission, Roscosmos will have to conduct a series of exploratory test launches. This is to ensure the safety and security of the astronauts who will be joining the mission. The test flights will include a Don-type super heavy rocket carrier. The Don carrier is expected to be able to carry a huge weight of about 130 tons to the low Earth orbit while carrying up to 32 tons to the orbit of the moon.
This manned mission to the Moon is also planned to be preceded by a lunar module. To this time, there is still no name released for this lunar module.
Apart from the mission to the Moon, Rogozin also expressed Russia's plans of putting up a permanent base on the satellite. If the space mission becomes fruitful, the space station that has been set up will be manned by avatars. These will be the robots that will act like the astronauts in space. The plan is to bring in as much information about the space as they can.
The United States will also be entering the race with the Trump Administration demanding Nasa to return to the moon by 2024.
In this race, there is no one agency or government that will win. It is every living thing on Earth that will win. With all the information this "space race" is going to bring in, humans will have a deeper understanding of the world we are living in.
