Cooperation to replace rivalry in space exploration

The Voice of Russia: Cooperation to replace rivalry in space exploration

People will surely fly to the Moon and Mars. 25 national space agencies including Russia’s space agency, NASA and the European space agency have agreed on coordinating their efforts to carry out these plans at a summit in Washington organized by the International Academy of Astronautics.

The International Academy of Astronautics, which was founded in Stockholm 50 years ago, has set the task of strengthening cooperation between the countries in the peaceful exploration of space. The participants of the meeting discussed four main issues, says the head of the Russian space agency, Anatoly Perminov.

“These are the future of manned flights, the use of automatic probes in space exploration, studying climate change and monitoring the indications of emergency situations and disasters,” says Anatoly Perminov.

Most importantly, the heads of the space agencies agreed that the time of rivalry had ended and the time of cooperation had begun. There is a need to pool a huge amount of resources and intellectual potential of various countries to carry out space exploration and prepare for flights to the Moon and Mars.

The participants supported the idea of pursuing a common policy towards the use of the International Space Station and noted that the use of common standards in making spacecraft would be expedient. All this is very important for future long-range flights, says Anatoly Perminov.

“Russia’s space agency and NASA agreed that it will be expedient to step up the work of an international space studying group and submit several proposals to it by space industry enterprises of Russia, the U.S., Europe and Japan for developing a habitable complex of an Earth-Moon system. To this end, there is a need to develop new technology that is necessary for future manned flights to asteroids and Mars and other planets,” Anatoly Perminov said.

Outer space has already become a habitual place for human beings although it is still a dangerous place for work. There is no future for mankind without serious space exploration.