The Hindu : Russia to join U.S. in Mars mission

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 18, 2004

International

International

Russia to join U.S. in Mars mission

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JAN. 17. Russia will join the U.S. in proposed missions to the Moon and Mars, a Russian space official said.

The National Aerospace Agency has already sent Rosaviakosmos its proposals concerning cooperation, said Nikolai Moiseyev, First Deputy Chief of the Russian Aerospace Agency.

"The Russian side will consider the proposals and take a decision on the format of its participation in the lunar and Mars missions," the official told the Itar-Tass news agency without giving details of the U.S. proposals. He said Russia had bountiful know-how in interplanetary space flights.

Russian space designers said they could prepare a lunar mission within a few years and build a spacecraft for Mars by 2014 if they had money. The NPO Lavochkin aerospace company said it could build a lunar rover in a couple of years for just $21 millions, Itar-Tass reported. The company built the Soviet Lunokhod that collected first lunar soil probes in 1970. Lavochkin's deputy head, Roald Kremnev, said his company was also capable of building spacecraft to fly unmanned missions to the Moon and robots capable of building temporary housing there.

Another space designer, Leonid Gorshkov of the RKK Energiya company that builds Russia's workhorse space rocket Proton, says it has designed a spacecraft for a manned mission to Mars as early as 2014. Mr. Gorshkov said the 77-tonne spacecraft modelled on the Russian Zvezda module for the International Space Station (ISS) would be assembled in orbit from components delivered by Proton booster rockets.

The Russian manned flight to Mars could cost $15 billions, one tenth of the U.S. estimate for a Mars mission announced by the U.S. President, George W. Bush, this week. However, Russia does not have the money even to build a planned science module for ISS, let alone prepare a mission to the Moon or to Mars. The better half of Russia's shoestring space budget of 13,687.6 million roubles ($472 millions) will be spent on keeping the ISS operational as the U.S. shuttles remain grounded for a second year following Columbia disaster in Feb. 2003. This year Russia will have to increase the number of flights to ISS from five to eight.

The U.S. has turned down Russian requests for funding help, forcing Rosaviakosmos to suspend the construction of Russian modules for ISS. Unless Russia fills its 30-per cent share in the space station by early 2008 it may be re-divided among the U.S. and other partners in ISS.

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