The US and Russia on Wednesday announced plans to cooperatively build the first lunar space station.

Roscosmos and NASA  Russia and America's space agencies  said they had signed a cooperation agreement at an astronautical congress in Adelaide.

The agreement brings Russia onboard to the Deep Space Gateway project announced by NASA earlier this year, which aims to send humans to Mars via a lunar station.

Read more: Will we evolve to adapt to life in space?

The proposed station would serve as a base for lunar exploration for humans and robots, and as a stopover for spacecraft.

"While the Deep Space Gateway is still in concept formulation, NASA is pleased to see growing international interest in moving into cislunar space (between Earth and the Moon) as the next step for advancing human space exploration," said Robert Lightfoot, acting administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Everything prepared NASA engineers loaded the Mars rover Perseverance onto an Atlas V rocket at the start of July. The rocket is due to launch on July 30 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rover should arrive on Mars by February 2021.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Presentation in a clean room This is how Perseverance looked when it was presented to the public a year ago. The rover will support NASA's Curiosity rover, the most modern rover until Perseverance came along. The new rover weighs a little over a ton — 100 kg (220 pounds) more than its predecessor. And at 3 meters (10 ft) long, it's also 10 centimeters longer as well.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars More performance Perseverance can be loaded with more research instruments and sensors than its predecessor. And its gripper arm, with its cameras and tools, is stronger, too. The rover can collect samples from Mars. It's got 23 cameras and many other instruments. One mission is to test whether it's possible to extract oxygen from Martian rock. But, hey, what's that standing next to the rover on the ground?

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars A small drone That's right! Perseverance has a helicopter onboard. That's never happened on a planetary mission before. The helicopter is completely new territory for its developers. It will be the first time they experience and collect data from flight in atmospheric conditions that are different from those on Earth, and in a gravity that is about a third of our own.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars The robotic giant Curiosity is the largest and most modern of all Mars rovers currently deployed. It landed on August 6, 2012, and has since traveled more than 21 kilometers. It is much more than just a rover. Its official name is "Mars Science Laboratory," and it really is a complete lab on wheels.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars What's in it? For example, it contains special spectrometer, which can analyze chemical compounds from a distance with the help of a laser; a complete meteorological station that can measure temperature, atmospheric pressure, radiation, humidity and wind speed; and most importantly, a chemistry lab that can run detailed analyses of organic compounds and is always on the hunt for traces of alien life.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Not just scratching the surface Curiosity has shown that life would theoretically be possible on Mars. But it hasn't discovered any life, yet. The robot's arm is equipped with a full power drill. Here, it's taking a sample in "Yellowknife Bay" inside the Gale Crater.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Off to the lab! The Mars dust is processed by a large number of instruments. First, it's filtered and separated into different-sized particles. Then, those get sorted and sent off to different analytical laboratory machines.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars A tiny predecessor Curiosity's predecessors were much smaller. On July 4, 1997, the small Mars rover Sojourner left its first tire tracks behind in the dust of the red planet. It was the first time a mobile robot had been left to its own devices there, equipped with an X-ray spectrometer to conduct chemical analyses and with optical cameras.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Size comparison Three rover generations. (The tiny one up front is Sojourner.) At 10.6 kilograms (23 pounds), it's not much bigger than a toy car. Its top speed: 1 centimeter per second. Opportunity weighs 185 kilograms — roughly the equivalent of an electric wheelchair. Curiosity is as big as a small car, at 900 kilograms. The big ones travel up to 4 or 5 centimeters per second.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Almost four months of duty Sojourner travelled about 100 meters during its lifetime and delivered data and pictures until September 27, 1997. This is one of the last pictures of it, taken nine days before the radio connection broke down. Sojourner probably died because the battery did not survive the cold nights.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Paving the way for tomorrow's technology Without the experience of Sojourner, newer rovers could have hardly been envisaged. In 2004, NASA landed two robots of the same model on Mars: Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit survived for six years, travelling a distance of 7.7 kilometers. The robot climbed mountains, took soil samples and withstood winter and sandstorms. Its sibling, Opportunity, lost contact on February 13, 2019.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars Lots of gadgets Opportunity passed the marathon distance of 42 kilometers back in 2015, and to this day, it has covered much more ground than Curiosity. It can take ground probes with its arm. It has three different spectrometers and even a 3D camera. It was last operating in "Perseverance Valley," an appropriate workplace for the sturdy robot, before being incapacitated by a sandstorm.

NASA's rover Perseverance is ready for Mars The red planet's landscapes This panorama was taken by Curiosity's mast camera. The most modern of the rovers will stay in service as long as possible — hopefully at least another five years and much longer. The Martian landscape looks familiar somehow, not unlike some deserts here on Earth. Should we give in to our wanderlust, then — or would it be better leave Mars to the robots? Author: Fabian Schmidt



The two nations would work together to develop the systems and standards needed to organize scientific missions in lunar orbit and to the surface of the Moon, Roscosmos said.

The partners intend "to develop international technical standards which will be used later, in particular to create a space station in lunar orbit," Roscosmos said.

Read more: Fifty years after Lunar Orbiter 4 mapped almost all the moon it's time we went back

Participants agreed it was important to develop unified standards to avoid future problems in space, Igor Komarov, Roscosmos's general director, said in televised remarks.

"Roscosmos and NASA have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station," the Russian space agency said.

"Taking into account the country's extensive experience in developing docking units, the station's future elements  as well as standards for life-support systems  will be created using Russian designs."

The two agencies plan to begin main works in the mid 2020s and will model the station on the ISS.

aw/rc (AFP, dpa)