A photo from open sources
Roscosmos has repeatedly announced its plans for the exploration of the moon. Unveiled programs mercilessly criticized for the lack of specifics. But here the plans began to take on visible shape with indicating specific goals and timelines. Well, fig, we need this Moon?! Probably the same question was asked to the madmen, departing to explore the Arctic and Antarctic. But it turned out that icy pantries are just packed with treasures. There is gas and oil, and gold, and minerals, and a bunch of other useful and necessary for humanity. Today, the Nordic countries fight for everyone square kilometer of the Arctic shelf. Increasingly the question is what is the special status of Antarctica by which it does not belongs to no one – an anachronism. More countries make territorial claims on the southern mainland. All beckon wealth under the ice shell. But the most far-sighted look in the sky, foreseeing future disputes about the division of the territory of the moon. 
Photos from open sources
Businessmen have views of the minerals hidden in her bowels. Scientists dream of creating a base camp on the moon, from which Expeditions will be sent to Mars, Venus and beyond. Treasured the military’s dream is to make the moon an unbreakable military space base with a couple of hundred nuclear missiles. About their plans for the future colonization of the moon openly declared a number of space powers, including the United States and China. Involved in the lunar race and Russia. At the Fifth Symposium on The solar system at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences representative of Roscosmos announced the main milestones of the Russian lunar programs.
Russian lunar program
According to the report, during 2018-2020. planned to send to The moon has three stations. In 2018, the Luna 25 will leave. The main goal of the launch – debugging landing technology and checking the operation of all mechanisms. For final grinding will be carried out another purely technical Launch of the Luna-26 station. Luna 27 will fly with serious scientific program. The station will land at the South Pole, will release a lunar rover, which will collect and analyze soil samples, ice and minerals. In the mid-2020s, a ship will fly from astronauts. The program includes a flyby of the moon, landing of a lunar rover, managed from the ship. In the early 2030s, it is planned to land people and the beginning of the construction of the lunar station. According to representatives Roscosmos, “we fly to the moon to settle there seriously and for a long time. “European reaction Roscosmos warned everyone ISS participating countries that does not plan to deal with maintaining the operability of the station after 2024, since completely switches to the lunar project. Warning caused violent reaction in the European Space Agency. Coming out of project, Russia will simply disconnect its segment from the ISS for use it in your lunar program. And without the Russian part station cannot exist in principle. European space agency is negotiating its participation in the Russian the project and is ready to provide Russia free of charge already off-the-shelf drilling rig and soft landing system. P.S. Cry on Ukrainian cosmonautics Ukraine as a future participant in the project not considered, since besides exorbitant ambitions to offer can’t do anything. She couldn’t even just keep what she got from the USSR cosmic wealth. Having received at the partition of the USSR not having analogues in the world research vessel “Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin “, the Ukrainian authorities (so that the good did not disappear) in a businesslike manner sold the pride of the Soviet space fleet for scrap metal at price of $ 170 / ton. So there will be no Ukrainian flag on the moon.
Antarctica Moon ISS Roscosmos Russia USSR �
