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Putin urges quick restart of domestic lunar missions

As the head of state pledged, "Russia will necessarily be exploring outer space and we will necessarily work in this direction"

MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. Russia should restart the domestic lunar project and missions to other planets, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

"We face enormous research tasks in this [space] sphere and they need to be consistently implemented," the head of state said at a festive meeting devoted to Russia’s Cosmonautics Day celebrated on April 12.

"First of all, it is necessary to restart our lunar program and missions to other planets of the solar system as quickly as possible, develop Russian space observatories that already help obtain new facts about the evolution of the Universe, open dozens of stars at the very edge of our Galaxy and objects in remote stellar systems," Putin elaborated.

As the head of state pledged, "Russia will necessarily be exploring outer space and we will necessarily work in this direction." "For us, this means advanced technologies needed for Earth. This is a qualitatively different scope of our science and economy, a reliable and advanced level of the country’s security," the Russian leader explained.

As the head of state pointed out, "surmounting technological barriers in storming the Universe gives special inspiring power, helps schoolchildren and students become pathfinders in sectors of the future."

"We need to necessarily help our young citizens conquer new heights," the Russian president stressed.

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