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European Space Agency to take part in Russian lunar program

ESA will supply high-resolution cameras for the first spacecraft to be blasted off to the Moon in 2019

© Artem Geodakyan/TASS

MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. The European Space Agency (ESA) will take part in the Russian lunar program, director general of the NPO Lavochkin research and industrial association, Sergey Lemeshevsky, said on Monday.

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"We hope, at least as of today all agreements have been reached, that the European Space Agency will take part in lunar research," he told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

According to Lemeshevsky, ESA will supply high-resolution cameras for the first spacecraft to be blasted off to the Moon in 2019. These cameras are necessary for the landing. Apart from that, ESA will supply a device to take lunar soil samples for the third lunar explorer.

In his words, suppliers of other systems for lunar explorers have not yet been chosen. "It is quite possible that ESA will take part in the development and manufacture of the high-precision landing systems. It will be the third explorer," he said.

"We have invited the Europeans to take part, they said ‘yes’ concerning soil collecting devices and ‘yes’ concerning high-precision cameras for the 2019 spacecraft. However talks on high-precision landing are still underway," he added.

According to earlier reports, EU countries will allocate 1.4 billion euro to finance ESA research programs, including its participation in the International Space Station (ISS) and the Russian-EU ExoMars program.

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