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Russia’s plans to reach the moon may have taken a giant leap, as the country’s space agency unveiled its intentions to base up to 12 cosmonauts on the lunar surface.

Despite years of budget cuts, Roscosmos — Russia’s space program — has designs on building a permanent research, mining and exploration base somewhere on the moon by 2030, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Tuesday.

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It would be a massive — and some would say unlikely — achievement for a country that has never landed a human on the moon. It would also help ease a decades-old sting: losing out on the Cold War-era “Space Race” to the United States, which culminated in July 1969 with Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface.

Lately, the U.S. and NASA have shifted their gaze to sending humans to an asteroid and to Mars. Russia, meanwhile, is resuscitating a Soviet strategy from the 1960s, when the notion of permanently basing people on the moon was first floated. The idea was discarded after 1969, until now.