Russia plans to land cosmonauts on the Moon by 2030

Roscosmos plans to build a new "Super Heavy" booster able to carry 27 metric tons to lunar polar orbit

Russia is planning to land cosmonauts on the Moon by 2030, according to Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos.

Rogozin presented an outline of Roscosmos' current activities as well as other projects that the space agency plans to undertake in near future, including a human landing on Moon in next decade at an event at Moscow University last week.

According to Rogozin, Roscosmos may soon start work on a new "Super Heavy" booster able to carry 103 metric tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and 27 metric tons to lunar polar orbit.

The plan further talks about a "Federation" spacecraft that will be built by 2022, and its first test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) completed by 2023.

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Assuming that the spacecraft and the rocket work as planned, Roscosmos will move ahead to conduct deep-space flights of the craft by mid-2020s, followed by a lunar soil sample return flight to Earth in 2027.

Finally, manned flights of the spacecraft to lunar orbit will start in 2029. Tests of a lunar lander and an inflatable lunar base module will also be carried out in the same year. If everything goes well, the crew landing mission would finally take off in 2030.

Very difficult times are ahead for our space program

Last year, Russia's spacecraft maker, Energia, also revealed a roadmap elaborating details of an ambitious project that aims to set up a base on the surface of Moon and to land Russian cosmonauts.

Energia claimed that the Moon mission would last for 14 days, and be preceded by the launch of an uncrewed lunar module to deliver the first components needed for the future lunar base.

While the Russian Moon landing plan sounds ambitious, the reality is that Russia's space activities have been marred by problems, including increasing incidents of rocket failures, funding issues, and uncertainty over the future of Roscosmos' partnership with NASA.

Rogozin's speech also comes amid rumours that he may soon be fired from his job at Roscosmos.

"Yesterday's speech by Dmitry Rogozin at Moscow State University, judging from several inside sources, overflowed the cup of patience," Vadim Lukashevich, a Russian aerospace analyst, wrote in a Facebook post.

"Now everyone is talking about his impending resignation, including his subordinates (these last predominately in curses)," he added.

"Very difficult times are ahead for our space program."

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