MOSCOW. May 22 (Interfax-AVN) - Other countries may join the long-term international initiative of the United States to expand the presence of humans and robots in the solar system, including studies of the Moon, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) reports.
The report posted on the agency website says the U.S. Congress gave a corresponding recommendation to the president when it discussed the NASA budget for fiscal 2009.
The report says that provisions on a habitable base on the Moon and international space cooperation constitute a separate section of the budget bill in which NASA spending for 2009 is approved to the amount of $19.2 billion or 11% more than in 2008.
When the House Subcommittee for Space and Aeronautics approved the NASA budget for 2009 it added a provision banning the permanent presence of humans at the space base on the Moon. In line with the bill the U.S. segment of the lunar base will be named after the first person who stepped on the surface of the Moon - U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong.