MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The state corporation Roscosmos plans to advocate the Russian lunar exploration program in the government by mid-2019, and it should be studied in the Security Council before the end of the spring, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin told journalists.

"This program will be advocated as part of the adoption of the new version of the basics of state policy in space activity. I think it will be done somewhere in the middle of this year," Rogozin said. He added that "a session of the Security Council devoted to space activity will be held before the end of spring, and all the issues will be studied there."

Roscosmos’ director general explained that if NASA is interested in the project of creating the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (Deep Space Gateaway), which Canada, Japan and the European Union plan to join, then Roscosmos and the Russian Academy of Sciences "aim to chiefly carry out missions on the Moon’s surface." He specified that the payload capacity of the super-heavy booster stipulates the delivery of at least 27 tonnes to the lunar orbit, that is it should include the landing and take-off module. Rogozin added that Russia’s lunar program should end with the development of either a national or international man-visited scientific base.