Article Posted on : - Aug 04, 2014

MOSCOW (BNS): Russia will spend 100 billion Rubles (about $2.8 billion) to conduct manned mission to the Moon, a research official associated with the project has said.

"An estimated cost of one project aimed at the development of an automatic lunar station is 10 billion rubles (about $280 million). The project is to be completed in five or six years.

"The manned lunar mission will cost ten times more," Igor Mitrofanov, laboratory director at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute was quoted as saying by Ria Novosti.

Before conducting the manned flight to Moon, it would be necessary to "learn to conduct the Moon landing all over again," and automatic lunar stations are needed for this purpose, the official said.

One of the partners of the Research Institute is currently developing three stations -- Luna-25 (Luna-Glob project), Luna-26 and Luna-27 -- under the Luna-Resource project.

While the Luna-25 and Luna-27 projects involve lunar landers aimed to run for one year, the Luna-26 will be an orbiter and will monitor the Moon for two years.

The long-delayed Luna-25 mission is slated for launch in 2016 and land at Moon's South Pole. It will be followed by the orbiter mission in 2018 and a lander mission in 2019 to drill the lunar surface in search of water.

Mitrofanov said that within the next ten years lunar bases will likely to be created.