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Roscosmos, ESA and NASA to play leading roles in lunar orbital station project

LE BOURGET /FRANCE/, June 19. /TASS/. Russian state aerospace corporation Roscosmos, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will likely be the main partners in Deep Space Gateway lunar orbital station project, Roscosmos Director General Igor Komarov told reporters at Le Bourget 2017 aerospace show.

"I think NASA, ESA and Roscosmos will be the most active of all participants in this project and the concrete roles will get contours later," he said. "It’s too early yet to speak about the details of participation and contributions.

Apart from these three agencies a big number of other participants is also engaged in the project of the lunar orbital station.

"Who will play roles and what roles these will be will depend on the readiness to take part in the project, both financially, technologically and by committing other resources to it," Komarov said.

At present, the sides are still designing the potential composition of the station, he said. "It’s clear the station will consist of modules and we’re discussing who could be responsible for which element. At this moment, we’re in the phase where the sides have not determined their positions clearly," Komarov said.

Deep Space Gateway is a NASA-drafted project of a lunar orbitals station, the objective or which is to design and test the technologies that could be utilized later on in more distant space flights, for instance, the ones to Mars.

The parties to the project hope to implement it in the 2020’s.